Alan,
My argument has nothing to do with self importance - just logic and common sense.
Seems unlikely given your efforts hitherto, but let's see.
Evolutionary algorithms have often been used successfully to solve complex problems by using simple incremental steps to reach a feasible solution.
I used such algorithms in my PhD research into computer aided optimum design of structures, which aimed to produce structural designs at minimum cost which would safely support various load conditions.
To reach the optimum goal, my system would test various combinations of discrete variables and eliminate those that failed or were too costly. When a combination was eliminated, my algorithm would backtrack to the last feasible solution and try branching the variables in a different direction or combination. You may see that there are some parallels with the the natural selection process of evolution.
Yes, but only some - the critical difference that's missing though is that evolution isn't working toward a predetermined plan like your model, but rather it causes adaptations in response to whatever the proximate environment happens to throw at it.
The problem is that for the algorithm to work it needs a vast number of combinations to be available for checking. It is relatively easy for the computer to generate an almost limitless number of combinations, but this is not so easy with the formation of life on this earth. There will be a limited number of mutations generated for the natural selection process to work on, and if these are truly random mutations, the vast majority of them will be non beneficial.
Yes they will be, but you seriously underestimate the number of opportunities for mutation to occur - in sexual reproduction a mutation can occur from "faulty" DNA copying every time successful mating happens. That's who knows how many trillions upon trillions of events.
The number of beneficial mutations needed to evolve a single cell organism to the billions of cells in a complex human being is incalculable. The true probability of all these beneficial mutations being generated at random and each one passing the survival test (and not getting destroyed by a non beneficial mutation) is as close a definition of absolute zero as you can get.
Try looking up "anthropic principle". The number of attempts that holes would have had to fit exactly a specific puddle is incalculably high too.
Your basic mistake here is a fallacy called survivor bias - because
Homo sapiens (or for that matter the puddle) made it, there must have been some plan all along for it to be that way. For all you know though there's a not very bright eight-nosed Bajingle monster on Alpha Centauri congratulating himself too by pointing at the incalculably long odds against
him existing in
his environment.
Nice try, but you've committed the classic mistake of looking down the wrong end of a telescope, much as might the lottery winner who decides that little old him must be special given the odds against him winning. The point though is that the universe doesn't know or care care whether you, the Bajngle monster or nothing at all emerges as a life form, any more than Camelot knows or cares who will win next week's lottery.
Sorry, but there it is.
