The importance of neutral null for understanding evolution • Hacker News Board

Re: The importance of neutral null for understanding evolution

#31

Post by antisthenes » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #26

samizdatum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that evolution is a tautological collapse of the "why" in "why do we exist". Let me explain: evolution is a massive, groping search in the ultrahigh dimensional space of possible organisms, one that is solving for fitness by literally obliterating less fit entities from existence. So fitness is actually just "what is good at existing", which, given enough iterations,…

> evolution is a massive, groping search It's not a search. There is no goal, no searcher, and nothing to find. The word evolution was chosen deliberately in its meaning of a dynamical system moving through state space. Not searching: just evolving.

It's a random walk with probabilities changing from 1 generation to the next based on surviving geno/phenotypes.

Re: The importance of neutral null for understanding evolution

#32

Post by samizdatum » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #26

samizdatum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that evolution is a tautological collapse of the "why" in "why do we exist". Let me explain: evolution is a massive, groping search in the ultrahigh dimensional space of possible organisms, one that is solving for fitness by literally obliterating less fit entities from existence. So fitness is actually just "what is good at existing", which, given enough iterations,…

> evolution is a massive, groping search It's not a search. There is no goal, no searcher, and nothing to find. The word evolution was chosen deliberately in its meaning of a dynamical system moving through state space. Not searching: just evolving.

In a banal sense, it's correct to say that there's no searcher, no goal to evolution. As far as we know, "natural selection" isn't "real" in the sense that electromagnetism is "real"; natural selection is just a staggeringly convenient shorthand that refers to the multitude of ways organisms can die. But if we go further, and think of evolution as a mere random walk through state space, we've suddenly lost all explanatory power. The independent emergence of echolocation in whales and bats, for instance, becomes a brute mystery.

Evolution only makes sense if we think of it as as some kind of massively parallel Monte Carlo that's weighted to explore regions of the state space with high fitness. So it's perfectly valid to talk, as biologist do, of selection pressures and directional selection, because- and here we've come full circle- there is a goal to evolution: to exist.

Re: The importance of neutral null for understanding evolution

#33

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC

samizdatum wrote: post #32

robotresearcher wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> evolution is a massive, groping search It's not a search. There is no goal, no searcher, and nothing to find. The word evolution was chosen deliberately in its meaning of a dynamical system moving through state space. Not searching: just evolving.

In a banal sense, it's correct to say that there's no searcher, no goal to evolution. As far as we know, "natural selection" isn't "real" in the sense that electromagnetism is "real"; natural selection is just a staggeringly convenient shorthand that refers to the multitude of ways organisms can die. But if we go further, and think of evolution as a mere random walk through state space, we've suddenly lost all explan…

And, to exist with a minimum of fuss. Why do people get cancer, or get feeble when old? Well, if the organism can reproduce and support their offspring well enough, given the eco-niche and available calories etc, then they are Fit. So, just enough avoiding cancer to work out in the end.

Kind of like the space program, where everything is made by the lowest bidder.

Re: The importance of neutral null for understanding evolution

#34

Post by pqs » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 8:03 AM UTC

blurbleblurble wrote: post #9

Retric wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are reading to deeply into things that have simpler explanations. Which is the point of the article, sometimes there is no real explanation other than it just happened that way. Sort of like how driving on the left or right side of the road started as a competently arbitrary choice, but now the rules are generally fixed in a given area. However, I might not be getting your point.

Okay, I've definitely been "guilty" of reading deeply into things that have simple explanations. That's cause I'm curious and I love trying to understand things! Whether or not I've dug "too deep" is feeling pretty close to a value judgement of something that's totally relative to one's point of view. So I'll leave that alone. > However, I might not be getting your point. If you weren't, it wasn't your fault, it's mo…

I think you would enjoy listening Jordan B. Peterson's comments on the links between evolution and the stories of the Bible. It is very interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos http://jordanbpeterson.com/2016/12/podcast/