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Imitating biology

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  • Imitating biology

    Source: Evolution News

    Speaking of sponges, they have a fine pore structure that could inspire greener storage in hydrogen-powered cars. A researcher at Northwestern University developed a spongy material out of aluminum with so many pores, a gram of it has the surface area of a football field. “Like a bath SPONGE, the product is able to hold and release large quantities of the gas at lower pressure and cost.” (BBC News)

    Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania envision many useful applications with “uniform-sized, (sub)micrometer-sized particles with diverse surface patterns” that “will enable applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering, energy storage, and displays.” They found a perfect biological entity to imitate: POLLEN GRAINS. (PNAS)

    Robot designers at UC Berkeley are finding out that to climb walls like a GECKO, their creations need toes. With toes that stick in one direction and peel in the opposite direction, geckos can go up, down, and sideways with ease. The design team lit up the toes with glowing markers to watch how they work.

    Source

    © Copyright Original Source


    Lots of designs!

    Source: Evolution News

    ... these are great designs in nature. Engineers would be scoffing if they could do better. Instead, it is evident that they are still having trouble imitating some of nature’s works even after decades of trying.

    © Copyright Original Source


    Designs we try an imitate are not what you would expect if nature is cobbled together with an algorithm that seeks local optimums.

    Blessings,
    Lee
    "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

  • #2
    Bad start citing Inelligent Design literature in the guise of science.
    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
      Source: Evolution News

      Speaking of sponges, they have a fine pore structure that could inspire greener storage in hydrogen-powered cars. A researcher at Northwestern University developed a spongy material out of aluminum with so many pores, a gram of it has the surface area of a football field. “Like a bath SPONGE, the product is able to hold and release large quantities of the gas at lower pressure and cost.” (BBC News)

      Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania envision many useful applications with “uniform-sized, (sub)micrometer-sized particles with diverse surface patterns” that “will enable applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering, energy storage, and displays.” They found a perfect biological entity to imitate: POLLEN GRAINS. (PNAS)

      Robot designers at UC Berkeley are finding out that to climb walls like a GECKO, their creations need toes. With toes that stick in one direction and peel in the opposite direction, geckos can go up, down, and sideways with ease. The design team lit up the toes with glowing markers to watch how they work.

      Source

      © Copyright Original Source


      Lots of designs!

      Source: Evolution News

      ... these are great designs in nature. Engineers would be scoffing if they could do better. Instead, it is evident that they are still having trouble imitating some of nature’s works even after decades of trying.

      © Copyright Original Source


      Designs we try an imitate are not what you would expect if nature is cobbled together with an algorithm that seeks local optimums.
      Nature has had billions of years of trial and error to come up with some nice designs. It would be silly not to take advantage of all that R & D.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Stoic View Post
        Nature has had billions of years of trial and error to come up with some nice designs. It would be silly not to take advantage of all that R & D.
        Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.

        Blessings,
        Lee
        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
          Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.

          Blessings,
          Lee
          The evolutio of the eye of various forms, and the retina have been demonstrated to have been capable of being evolved naturally. Your attempting to propose a negative hypothesis which cannot be falsified.
          Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
          Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
          But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

          go with the flow the river knows . . .

          Frank

          I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
            Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.

            Blessings,
            Lee
            The evolution of the eye of various forms, and the retina have been demonstrated to have been capable of being evolved naturally from the simple to the complex. Your attempting to propose a negative hypothesis which cannot be falsified.
            Last edited by shunyadragon; 08-09-2020, 07:46 PM.
            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

            go with the flow the river knows . . .

            Frank

            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.
              I believe the argument is that such inelegant design examples are what we would not expect from an omniscient, omnipotent God, rather than that is all we can expect from evolution.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                Designs we try an imitate are not what you would expect if nature is cobbled together with an algorithm that seeks local optimums.
                For the most part when we look at the designs of biological systems, they seem to be pretty terrible in terms of design quality. But a small number of them are good designs.

                This is what we would expect from chance and evolution - a statistical distribution of design quality centered around poorer designs. Absolutely not what we would expect from an intelligent being doing the designing.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                  Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.
                  True, but you're missing that there's clear evidence of lineage and inheritance of this mistake. A designer can for any arbitrary reasons do something different, he is not tied down by past mistakes. Yet we see biological features inherited as clear as day and shared back up to a common ancestor, but then not with species outside of this common ancestor. So it is explained by evolution, but it is left a mystery if it is a designer.

                  Why would a designer choose to design things, so it matches the patterns of inheritance we'd see if things naturally evolved?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                    Yet inelegant design examples (such as the human retina) are often pointed to as examples of what we should expect from evolution.
                    Inelegant design examples are contrasted with better design examples, such as the cephalopod retina, to counter the design hypothesis. Why does the designer use both a better design and a worse design? Is the hypothesised designer incapable of telling good design from bad design?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                      Designs we try an imitate are not what you would expect if nature is cobbled together with an algorithm that seeks local optimums.
                      Why would that be true? Both aspects of the statement - one that evolution only discovers local optima, and two that we'd only ever seek to imitate global optima - need to be explained.
                      "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                        For the most part when we look at the designs of biological systems, they seem to be pretty terrible in terms of design quality. But a small number of them are good designs.
                        I would disagree, design quality seems to be good overall. What terrible designs did you have in mind?

                        Originally posted by Leonhard
                        Why would a designer choose to design things, so it matches the patterns of inheritance we'd see if things naturally evolved?
                        Common design patterns, would be the reasoning here.

                        Originally posted by rossum
                        Why does the designer use both a better design and a worse design?
                        Both designs are good, apparently, both retinas have their own rationale:

                        Source: Reasons to Believe

                        First, in examining the cephalopod retina, it is apparent that they do not have an RPE “layer” because if one were present, it would seriously impede the incoming light. Of course, this works for cephalopods because they live in water environments where ambient light is drastically reduced.

                        Source

                        © Copyright Original Source



                        Blessings,
                        Lee
                        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                          Why would that be true? Both aspects of the statement - one that evolution only discovers local optima, and two that we'd only ever seek to imitate global optima - need to be explained.
                          Evolution is a hill-climbing algorithm, so it will tend to stop at the top of the nearest hill.

                          Source: Towards Data Science

                          One of the main problems faced by evolutionary algorithms is the presence of local optima in the fitness landscape. Local optima, can, in fact, mislead our algorithm to not reach our desired global maxima in favour of a less optimal solution.

                          Source

                          © Copyright Original Source


                          Now he goes on to describe ways to alleviate this problem, but it's still a problem.

                          And I don't claim that we seek only to imitate global optimums, I only claim that biological designs are remarkably good, better even than humans have been able to do, in various cases.

                          Blessings,
                          Lee
                          "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                            Evolution is a hill-climbing algorithm, so it will tend to stop at the top of the nearest hill.

                            Source: Towards Data Science

                            One of the main problems faced by evolutionary algorithms is the presence of local optima in the fitness landscape. Local optima, can, in fact, mislead our algorithm to not reach our desired global maxima in favour of a less optimal solution.

                            Source

                            © Copyright Original Source


                            Now he goes on to describe ways to alleviate this problem, but it's still a problem.

                            And I don't claim that we seek only to imitate global optimums, I only claim that biological designs are remarkably good, better even than humans have been able to do, in various cases.
                            That's an evolutionary algorithm. it's not evolution. Try again.
                            "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                              Evolution is a hill-climbing algorithm, so it will tend to stop at the top of the nearest hill.

                              Source: Towards Data Science

                              One of the main problems faced by evolutionary algorithms is the presence of local optima in the fitness landscape. Local optima, can, in fact, mislead our algorithm to not reach our desired global maxima in favour of a less optimal solution.

                              Source

                              © Copyright Original Source


                              Now he goes on to describe ways to alleviate this problem, but it's still a problem.

                              And I don't claim that we seek only to imitate global optimums, I only claim that biological designs are remarkably good, better even than humans have been able to do, in various cases.

                              Blessings,
                              Lee
                              Hill? Are you referring to an energy hill. You need to clarify this, because there is more energy availble than necessary for evolution. Evolution is i a nillion hills and still climbing.

                              The bottom line is this is not a scientific approach.
                              Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                              Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                              But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                              go with the flow the river knows . . .

                              Frank

                              I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                              Comment

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