Sean,
You are contradicting yourself now. You claim that language change is not a good analogy for biological evolution, yet you feel free to use it as one. You cant have it both ways. Language either is or isnt an informative analogy for evolutionary processes. Your comments about spelling and letters show that you dont realize that language changes primarily via the verbal-auditory channel and not via orthography, or are allowing yourself to form sloppy arguments. Furthermore, you still dont understand the significance of batter. Your counterexample of cat does not work because it does not fit the grammatical usage for the suffix -er. The hypothetical word catter makes no sense in English because cat does not refer to an action nor a tool or similar usable object. Because bat refers to a usable object and the action connected with the object then batter is grammatically understandable as someone who bats. Likewise, catter would means someone who cats, yet that makes no sense in English since cats is not a verb. Now, given that cat is a noun, catter could also refer to someone who does something associated with cats; however, that is more ambiguous unless more context clues are given. Yes appending the suffix -er to any word is not going to always make grammatical sense, but so what? Functional change only requires that it works for only a subset of all possibilities. It failing sometimes is a lot different than it failing everytime.
Perhaps if I use an example not found in real English you will be less likely to miss the point. Now foo is a new material that can be made from mixt. The verb to foo refers to the process of turning mixt into foo using. Now if I were to tell an English speaker that my brother is a fooer, hed know to what I was referring given that he knew about fooing. Even if it had never dawned on him that someone could foo for a living he would instantly understand exactly what I was referring to. I suspect that most posters on this board are able to follow what I just said about the art of fooitry event if they had never studied foology or even read that chemical process of footion occurs when you put the prefoo in a foopot and add fooinators. That is what grammatical rules allow us to do. Although, this is the first time that you have either read or heard the above sentences you were able to follow along and understand them. Your knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary allowed me to introduce a novel concept with some related words and you were able to get the gist of what I am saying. Am I right? Of course, youd understand even better if I took you to my brothers foofactory when I told you this.
Its ironic that you say that I am reaching when I describe language evolution, and then turn around and give a description of language change that is consistent with how I described it. Remember when I said that language change behaves similar to Ohtas nearly neutral model for nucleotide/amino acid substitution. I suggest that you go read up on that subject before you contend to say that my comparisons are reaching.
I find it funny that youd call genetic programming bs. The only reason youd do so is because you are completely ignorant about the field. I suggest that you pick up a copy of the textbook, Genetic Programming, an Introduction by Banzhaf, Nordin, Keller, and Francone before you continue to assert that it is impossible to evolve computer programs via mutation and selection. In fact researches have even been able to use the same techniques to evolve hardware using the flexable architecture of FPGA. One experiment evolved a chip that could discriminate between 1kHz and 10kHz. It was more efficient than any one designed by engineers, but the researchers are still trying to figure out how it works. Another experiment sought to evolve a chip that produced an oscillating signal and the researchers got one. To their surprise an oscillator did not evolve; a radio did. That radio was simply stealing an oscillating signal from the air and outputting it. So for you to argue that evolutionary computing does not work shows your ignorance of decades of computer science research. Maybe next time you should do some research before you profess what is bs or not. Argumentum ex ignoratia is no way to operate in an honest, intellectual debate.
You are contradicting yourself now. You claim that language change is not a good analogy for biological evolution, yet you feel free to use it as one. You cant have it both ways. Language either is or isnt an informative analogy for evolutionary processes. Your comments about spelling and letters show that you dont realize that language changes primarily via the verbal-auditory channel and not via orthography, or are allowing yourself to form sloppy arguments. Furthermore, you still dont understand the significance of batter. Your counterexample of cat does not work because it does not fit the grammatical usage for the suffix -er. The hypothetical word catter makes no sense in English because cat does not refer to an action nor a tool or similar usable object. Because bat refers to a usable object and the action connected with the object then batter is grammatically understandable as someone who bats. Likewise, catter would means someone who cats, yet that makes no sense in English since cats is not a verb. Now, given that cat is a noun, catter could also refer to someone who does something associated with cats; however, that is more ambiguous unless more context clues are given. Yes appending the suffix -er to any word is not going to always make grammatical sense, but so what? Functional change only requires that it works for only a subset of all possibilities. It failing sometimes is a lot different than it failing everytime.
Perhaps if I use an example not found in real English you will be less likely to miss the point. Now foo is a new material that can be made from mixt. The verb to foo refers to the process of turning mixt into foo using. Now if I were to tell an English speaker that my brother is a fooer, hed know to what I was referring given that he knew about fooing. Even if it had never dawned on him that someone could foo for a living he would instantly understand exactly what I was referring to. I suspect that most posters on this board are able to follow what I just said about the art of fooitry event if they had never studied foology or even read that chemical process of footion occurs when you put the prefoo in a foopot and add fooinators. That is what grammatical rules allow us to do. Although, this is the first time that you have either read or heard the above sentences you were able to follow along and understand them. Your knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary allowed me to introduce a novel concept with some related words and you were able to get the gist of what I am saying. Am I right? Of course, youd understand even better if I took you to my brothers foofactory when I told you this.
Its ironic that you say that I am reaching when I describe language evolution, and then turn around and give a description of language change that is consistent with how I described it. Remember when I said that language change behaves similar to Ohtas nearly neutral model for nucleotide/amino acid substitution. I suggest that you go read up on that subject before you contend to say that my comparisons are reaching.
I find it funny that youd call genetic programming bs. The only reason youd do so is because you are completely ignorant about the field. I suggest that you pick up a copy of the textbook, Genetic Programming, an Introduction by Banzhaf, Nordin, Keller, and Francone before you continue to assert that it is impossible to evolve computer programs via mutation and selection. In fact researches have even been able to use the same techniques to evolve hardware using the flexable architecture of FPGA. One experiment evolved a chip that could discriminate between 1kHz and 10kHz. It was more efficient than any one designed by engineers, but the researchers are still trying to figure out how it works. Another experiment sought to evolve a chip that produced an oscillating signal and the researchers got one. To their surprise an oscillator did not evolve; a radio did. That radio was simply stealing an oscillating signal from the air and outputting it. So for you to argue that evolutionary computing does not work shows your ignorance of decades of computer science research. Maybe next time you should do some research before you profess what is bs or not. Argumentum ex ignoratia is no way to operate in an honest, intellectual debate.
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These designer genes were in fact created with supernatural intelligent design. Yes, the creations of human beings are "supernatural" creations since they are above purely naturalistic processes. The same thing is true for computer programming. Your examples of computer evolution are nothing more than the evolution of functions with in a very small area of flexibility. However, when it comes to functions such as calculator programs, word processing programs, photo editors . . . comptures will never be able to evolve such functions using mutations and function based selection. Yet, humans are able to cross the neutral gaps and create such software functions in short order via the "supernatural" power of intelligent design.
