tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post6711680252391712412..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: Meyer's Interview of BerlinskiUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-84153834541547045632010-02-09T15:52:27.547-05:002010-02-09T15:52:27.547-05:00we already know that Berlinski's claims about ...<i>we already know that Berlinski's claims about what mathematicians believe about evolution are not reliable.</i><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genetical_Theory_of_Natural_Selection" rel="nofollow">R.A. Fisher</a>! Fisher, the famous statistician and mathematician, also began the modern evolutionary synthesis with his 1918 paper "<a href="http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/coll/special/fisher/9.pdf" rel="nofollow">The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance</a>."<br /><br />In this paper Fisher also introduced the word "variance" in its modern mathematical context.<br /><br />Fisher also had <a href="http://www.library.adelaide.edu.au/digitised/fisher/241.pdf" rel="nofollow">this</a> to say about the futility of any "intelligent designer":<br /><br />"If we imagine, then, some extra-natural agency endeavouring to influence the organic evolution of mammals and birds by the production, on millions of different occasions, of this single mutation, we can recognise that its efforts were futile and inoperative."<br /><br />As usual, Berlinski's bizarre assertions are easily refuted.stvsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-12534614076678239792010-02-07T08:08:18.521-05:002010-02-07T08:08:18.521-05:00I appreciate your work in refuting Meyers et al. I...I appreciate your work in refuting Meyers et al. I'm not a biologist and your words help me in arguing against creationists. Keep it up!Danielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07950060928440538096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-67736291696847728582010-02-04T18:38:12.743-05:002010-02-04T18:38:12.743-05:00Re: 5. I suppose Lotka and Rashevsky didn't co...Re: 5. I suppose Lotka and Rashevsky didn't count until the Dover editions of their books came out?!Barryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15601407170512828091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-72489433046329631352010-02-04T16:48:55.898-05:002010-02-04T16:48:55.898-05:00I find the claim about finite automata particularl...I find the claim about finite automata particularly hard to understand. Even if I had some sort of finite automata, if they are being repeatedly rerun and their data is impacting the world around them, then they are effectively not going to act like finite automata. To use a silly example:<br /><br />consider the finite automata that duplicate Conway's Game of Life. The input space is at most 18 bits (based on whether that square is alive and whether the surrounding 8 squares are alive) and then can send out an accept or reject after running where accept is live and reject is die or stay dead. These automata don't have many states (to do this rigorously one needs to decide how the input data comes in an ordered fashion on your tape, but this is just a matter of convention). We now have a collection of finite automata that is effectively Turing complete. <br /><br />In fact, if automata can reproduce we can just start out with automata surrounding the finite, living region and have each turn them reproduce into their neighboring squares. So we can do this with even a finite number of DFAs.<br /><br />There are some details that would need to be filled in here to be rigorous but there's no reason this wouldn't be an exercise for an intro theoretic comp sci class for undergrads or even smart high school students.<br /><br />I really have to wonder if Berlinksi even bothered thinking about this claim at all.Joshuahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00637936588223855248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-4863675929132137992010-02-04T15:31:38.745-05:002010-02-04T15:31:38.745-05:00Evolution has no memory, Berlinski says, and there...<i>Evolution has no memory, Berlinski says, and therefore is analogous to finite automata.</i><br /><br />That is hip deep bullshit. A population's genome <i>is</i> a memory system, a selective memory for what worked in prior selective environments.RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-31482959246944940692010-02-04T13:02:08.260-05:002010-02-04T13:02:08.260-05:00Berlinski is my favorite creationist poseur! If h...Berlinski is my favorite creationist poseur! If he lived in Texas we'd refer to him as all hat and no cattle.<br /><br />I listened to an interview with Berlinski in which he explained, mathematically, why a "cow" (his words) could not evolve into a whale. Is argument was that he started to count the "engineering changes" that would have to be made to the cow and stopped counting at 50,000.<br /><br />Really, Berlinski, and how many Big Chief tablets did that take? Oh, and, gee, Berlinski, you didn't keep a record of the "engineering changes." What a shame!Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921039513056888571noreply@blogger.com