Changes in the Italian wall lizard population.

On the small island of Pod Mrcaru, off the coast of Croatia, scientists have managed to conduct an accidental experiment in evolutionary biology. In 1971 they transported five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards to the island to observe their adaptation to the new environment but the outbreak of the Croatian war prevented them from returning until 2004. By this time the lizard population had grown to over five thousand in number, spanning more than thirty generations. And, during this time, they have undergone some startling physiological changes.

Pod Mrcary has abundant vegetation which was thought to be an ideal habitat for the insects that the lizards prey upon. It was thought that these insects would serve as a primary food source however, nature had other plans. The lizards instead acquired completely new biological structures that would allow them to digest the abundant plant life; they developed a set cecal valves, located between the large and small intestine, which serve to slow down food in their fermenting chambers. This allows the lizards to process the cellulose and fatty acids and gives them the ability to digest vegetation.  This change has also been reflected in the lizard’s phenotype. They have developed a less defensive behaviour and social structure. For example, their populations have grown in density and they are forming social groups to allow for easier reproduction.

To the scientists, the most startling aspect of this is the time scale over which this change had occurred. The lizards developed completely new structures in approximately thirty years while the conventional evolutionary thinking is that such a significant adaptation should take millions of years. If these changes can be linked to a change at the genetic level it will mean an unprecedented rate of evolutionary change. As far as I know this is work that is still being completed.

I don’t know if this will prove to be clear example of evolution but its certainly sounds like it. The experts in this field seem to be reserving their judgment and I am inclined to let them do what they do. After all, they have far more experience in this field than I. However, one thing is clear - changes, be they genetic or otherwise, have occurred in the population. I will be following this up and I hope to report more to you in the future.

[1]  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution_2.html

Where I am going to have coffee tomorrow

In the past year I have watched more than my fair share of theology debates and I have noticed a reoccurring argument non-believers. It is claimed that only in scripture can we find meaning and moral absolutes. I’ve been wanting to comment on this for a little while now. I had a bit of an emotional weekend during which these themes seemed to be reoccurring so I thought tonight would be a good time for this post.

Let me start with moral absolutes, because I think that is a relatively easy point to address. In “A Letter to a Christian Nation” Sam Harris gives a wonderful definition of moral behavior; something can be deemed as immoral if it imposes on another living thing’s ability to find and experience happiness. This is something that I think any rational human being can agree to and it has the added bonus of not having any reference to scripture. Why would you want to openly embrace a doctrine which is so openly against this idea? One which is openly discriminatory against women, homosexuality and peoples of other faiths. How can you claim that such a foundation is moral?

Finding meaning in life is a bit tricker. It is, after all, an intensely personal thing. At the surface, I, and many other scientists, derive meaning from trying to understand the hidden patterns of the universe. There is something profound and wonderful about looking at the world and seeing chaos, only to have it disperse away as you tease out the hidden rules. Other people find meaning in other ways. I look at my friends and I see the joy in their relationships with their friends and loved ones, in their work as engineers or simply by finding beauty in art and literature. On a deeper level I have felt moved by a handful of personal relationships. These are the relationships that pushed me and challenged me to rise to my potential. None of these things require a reference to scripture. They are innate aspects of human existence. They are also fleeting, given our finite time on this planet, which only adds to the awe.

Part and parcel of belief in God is a belief in some form of eternal afterlife. A belief that this life is really the prelude to something eternal and blissful (or not so if you’re not in with the saved). This belief has the rather unfortunate consequence of making one blind the the world around them and unappreciative of the value of the time they are given. Why should you take the time to be with the ones you love or find the things that drive you if this isn’t the main act?

The idea that God has interest in what we do makes adds a whole other level of degradation. If God can force you to act in certain ways or somehow governs yours actions then your personal meaning is no longer yours. Now, you can claim that he gave us free will so that we could choose our own paths, but there is always that threat of eternal fire if you don’t conform. Such a form of motivation isn’t any different than if he simply removed our free will and forced us on his path.

Tomorrow morning I am going to get up early and go to my favorite coffee shop on campus. I am going to get their early enough to watch the campus wake up so I can people watch while they start their day. This always gives me a warm feeling and its one of those little things that I find compelling.

Hitchens vs Hitchens

This is a debate between Christopher Hitchens and his brother Peter, which I found today on youTube. Its format is in two parts and the formal topics are the war in Iraq and religion. I found it highly informative and very entertaining so I thought I would post it here for your pleasure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmnVQLOd9Lg
Its 14 parts long, so I am only posting the first. The remaining ones are in the responses.

Evolution’s “Chilling Logical Conclusion”?

Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released to the public this past Friday. I have not seen it yet, but WordPress has been abuzz about the film, both with praise and criticism. From what I have read, the film is about the expulsion of Intelligent Design (ID) theories from mainstream science. It claims that ID is being actively suppressed by the scientific community for dogmatic reasons rather than its complete lack of scientific merit. After trying to make this case, the film then goes on in an attempt to link evolution with Nazi Germany and eugenics. In the discussions here on WordPress, I have come across a number of arguments made by various bloggers about how this is the chilling logical conclusion of the theory of evolution; survival of the fittest trumps all and therefore evolutionists must conclude that the weaker members of the species should be killed off. I don’t understand the reasoning here.

Evolution is based on the combined principles of natural selection and random mutation. With every generation there are mutations. Some are harmful, the majority are benign, and some of them are beneficial. The beneficial mutations that allow an organism to live longer and reproduce more will tend to be passed down to future generations. Survival of the fittest is referring to the fitness of the organism in the sense of its ability to breed and pass such a mutation onward.

We know that breeding from a small gene pool is harmful. Selective dog breeding is producing constant genetic flaws that are detrimental to the species. This is the reason its becoming increasingly difficult for dog breeders to find pure breeds. We outlaw incest for this very reason. A diverse gene pool is essential for evolution to occur. The practice of eugenics actively limits the diversity of a population and would prevent this from occurring. So, can someone please explain to me how I am supposed to logically get to that from natural selection with random mutation?

More on Godel

In a previous post I mentioned something about the unprovable statements of Godel. Today I thought I would elaborate a little on my thinking.

Kurt Godel was a mathematician who produced a remarkable theorem about logic and logical systems such as mathematics. In plain terms, the theorem states that when you have a series of axioms, or loosely, assumptions, which are build up to a series of statements by apply first-order logic and simple mathematical operations, that there will always be a true statement that cannot be proven from the axioms. This simply means that there will exist a statement that will never be violated by any of the proven statements or axioms but in itself can’t be proven. This is known as Godel’s Incompleteness theorem. It shows that any self-consistent system of logic is necessarily incomplete.

In the context of complexity I think this applies to strong emergent complexity as opposed to weak. Weak emergence is when the complicated behaviour is surprising but could, at least in principle, be logically deduced from the simple rules of the system. Strong emergence occurs when the complexity cannot be logically arrived at from the underlying rules. It seems to me that such complexity could be considered as a true statement about the behaviour of the system that cannot be proven. To my knowledge, strong emergence has never been demonstrated in a system, however, this connection to Godel’s theorem would mean that we have a good reason to look for it.

Some thoughts on modern discourse.

Present day society is on the cusp of the first global civilization this planet has ever seen. One of the barriers preventing us from reaching this is that we have yet to reach a genuine consensus regarding how we assess the merit of ideas. One method, and one I happen to think is the right method, is to make our judgments based on evidence and repeatable demonstrations. This is probably the only means we have of obtaining objective statements about reality that do not depend on the person making the observation. Central to this are two concepts; the notion that burden of proof lies with the proponent and, when evidence is presented, that it be critically analyzed. The scientific method has these very ideas at its core and has been remarkably successful in expanding our knowledge of the universe and our mastery of technology. Does it not make sense to approach public policy and ideology in a similar manner?

One must provide evidence for their claims. Given the explosion of human knowledge in the past two centuries, this appears to be the only plausible way to conduct ourselves. Just think about how far back modern medicine would be set if every time some wingnut claimed tonic water cures cancer, doctors and researchers had to expend their time and resources refuting it rather than following promising research leads. On the other hand, if someone can provide compelling evidence for their claims then researchers are obligated to closely examine it. It must be vetted by people in a position to do so. With this in mind, it seems obvious to me that any theory or belief structure hoping to influence public policy should be subjected to intense scrutiny. After all, such policy has the potential to impact the happiness of thousands of people. In many ways, modern society is failing to embrace this - we don’t scrutinize things before they are trumpeted as the source sound policy or law. The Christian right and their political power is a clear example of this.

Religion seems to hold a position that is immune from criticism. We are told to respect faith. That it’s a remarkable thing for someone in modern times to have faith. Its also bullshit. Once groups like the Christian right lobby to ban things like abortion and stem cell research, or condemn homosexuality, based on their beliefs they open the door for healthy scrutiny. If we are to follow the teachings of their religious books we are allowed to question the validity of those books. One is allowed to question if its historically accurate or if there is any evidence that it was actually written by this god fellow they go on about. And, we should do so in the same manner that we would critique any proposal made by any other person. In the context of the religious texts, this means that science and modern history should be brought to bare and this should be done in the public arena by experts. This also means that the books such as the bible must be validated by sources other than the book itself. Jesus’ existence must be corroborated against historical contemporary writings of the time and the logistics of Noah’s ark should be worked out. You cannot base your entire argument for the validity of a book by only looking at passages taken from that book. If you disagree, then I have proof of the existence of Dracula which holds to the same level of rigor. I mean it. I have Stoker’s book on my shelf.

In a society built on evidentiary facts free speech becomes paramount. One must be able to express or critique ideas. Censorship of ideas or criticism bypasses the entire process and is therefore intolerable. Yet such acts seem to be occurring all the frequently. If you spend any amount of time following the creation vs evolution discussion on youTube you will find countless instances of false DMCA claims filed by a group called the Creation Science Evangelists (CSE). They claim their critics have violated copywrite by using CSE video clips; video clips that that the CSA has stated to be in the public domain. In the event of a DMCA claim, youTube, who are only protecting themselves, will automatically remove or suspend a video or user pending an investigation. This has provided the CSE with an effective way to silence critics. This is unacceptable in modern society where we should value honest and rational debate. They have been allowed to put forward their theory. The experts have reviewed it and rejected it. They should not be able to silence these objections. If you agree, and have a youTube account, I encourage you to write the staff and make your voice heard. Tell them that you value open debate and mechanisms must be put in place to protect against this blatant form of censorship.

Complexity

The notion of emergent complexity has been appearing in a growing number of disciplines. It’s a powerful idea that appears to underline many phenomena such as many-body physics, evolution and consciousness. Simply stated, emergent complexity occurs when a large number of interacting bodies, such as molecules, companies, or people, collectively produce behaviour that cannot be deduced from the consideration of a few of the constituents in isolation. This may sound like a bit of an obvious statement but many people tend to ignore this possibility. For example, market analysts tend to think of the whole as a collection of individual consumers who act solely in their best interest.

The game of life, which I posted a video for earlier, is a striking example this. On their own, the populated squares can only reproduce or die based on a very simple set of rules. However, out of these simple rules emerges complicated, strange and life-like behaviour. Many examples of this can also be drawn from physics [1] but I won’t go into great detail about those. The point I want to make you aware of is that very unexpected things can happen when you have a large number of actors who interact with one another. In this light, it is not hard to imagine how complex life can build itself out of a primordial chemical “soup” (although the details are left as an exercise for the reader). One might try to keep this in mind in discussions about social policy.

As I have been reading about this more and more I have come across a few discussions about how one might alternatively define emergence. Some workers have gone as far as to define it as when the behaviour of the system cannot be logically deduced from the simple laws of physics that govern the parts. I can’t help but wonder if this is at all related to the unprovable rules of Godel?

[1] P. Anderson, “More is different” Science 177, 393 (1979).

The Game of Life

This is a really interesting demonstration of emergent complexity. The rules of the game are as follows:

For a space that is ‘populated’:

1) Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness.

2) Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.

3) Each cell with two or three neighbors survives

For a space that is ‘empty’ or ‘unpopulated’:

1) Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

If you punch “life” into Matlab it will give you a neat little applet that runs the game.