[QUOTE="Tylendal"]
It's supposed to represent evolution, not emulate it. And yes, you could take a cupcake at, if not random,at least at a choice unnaffected by your own bias. Assign each cupcake two numbers from one to six, then roll a dice. There you go. However, I digress. Since the letters of the alphabet aren't going to be scurrying off on their own to reproduce, the act of writing them out yourself is a simulacrum of such actions.
Action, is clear... evolution works with living creatures, not rocks.
Intent? There is no intent here, other than that of emulating the natural pressures applied in a real scenario.
And as for control? But of course. That's what natural selection is... control. Without control, there would be no limit to the outrageous paths that evolution would have taken, with completely nonsensical results. What creationists fail to realize is just how huge a factor control is in evolution. Maybe not concious control, but control nonetheless.
jethrovegas
It would not be random. Unaffected by bias =/= random... and you seem to have admitted this, which is odd, asthis alone is enough to bring your metaphor crashing down.
Nevertheless, I'll continue, if only for the sake of argument.
Once more, the second problem with your metaphor; the word 'Take'.
Take a letter randomly.
It implies necessity of intentional action on the part of the arranger, and it implies the necessity of the 'random' arranger to begin with. This does not work. The metaphor implies that the letters must be set in motion. Within the context of the metaphor, the letters are incabable of arranging themselves, randomly or otherwise. Within the context of the metaphor the letters would not make words if you did not "randomly" arrange them.
It's just a deeply flawed metaphor. Excuse its flaws by whatever means you deem necessary, but do remember that you asked for it...
help me find errors Tylendal
...and you shouldn't be surprised when you get what you ask for.
What is that saying? 1000 monkeys banging away on 1000 typewriters for 1000 years will eventually produce Shakespeare? Well it would take more (MUCH more) time than that but it is essentially true; mathmatical statistical probability says it to be so, given enough monkeys, typewriters and time. The metaphor is extremely close to this scenario so I use it to argue my point.
To argue randomness in a metaphor is a moot point first of all. It's a METAPHOR and randomness can be assumed without ill effect to anyone's logic or ego. This is not a proof, just a concept.
Having said that ...
"Randomness is a lack of order, purpose, causeor predictability. Randomness as defined by Aristotle is the situation, when a choice is to be made which has no logical component by which to determine or make the choice. A random processis a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution such that the relative probability of the occurrence of each outcome can be approximated or calculated. For instance, the rolling of a six-sided dice in neutral conditions may be said to produce random results in that one cannot compute before a roll what digit will be landed on, but the probability of landing on any of the six rollable digits can be calculated because of the finite cardinality of the set of possible outcomes."
This is from Wikipedia (PLEASE do not harp on me for quoting from Wikip., anyone with brains can see the definition is true). I would say that the metaphor stays within the bounds of the definition. It IS a lack of order, purpose, cause or predictability.
Ok, ok, maybe we haven't ruled out PURPOSE but we can get around that by first stating that the whole concept is to PROVE that order can be created from randomness so therefore it HAS a purpose and thus is NOT a random act ... and if a painter decides to paint himself into the landscape then he is truly depicting the scene correctly; having been there. The point I am trying to make is that this is silly, for the sake of this arguement to disprove ultimate purpose is not necessary and can be tossed out the window. There HAS TO BE an observer or, in this case a DOER, a catalyst for action or we have NOTHING: no metaphor, no painting, nor no results - NOTHING.
The monkey banging on the typewriter or the TAKER of the letter. It is the same. Your arguement is that the action of taking a letteror typing needs to have forethought and thus annihiliates randomness. FORETHOUGHT DOES NOT PRECLUDE RANDOMNESS. If I see three cupcakes and someone asks me to hand them one, and the cupcakes are EXACTLY the same except for the color of frosting, and the importance of what color the person asking me for a cupcake prefers never enters my brain, I hand them a cupcake at RANDOM. This is easily proved by a simple question: if the receiver of the cupcake then asks me why I handed them that particular cupcake, well, I really don't have a good answer. It might be that it was closer, it might be that the cupcake (which we will say has bright red frosting) stood out. It might be NONE of those reasons so one can safetly assume that it was, in fact, random even though I had to form the thought to pick up the cupcake and hand it to someone.
If we take your declaration that forethought precludes randomness to it's furthest extreme then it would be true to say that NOTHING that is a result of a thought-turned-action is random so therefore nothing we do is random. This is simply not true. Why do some people murder others they don't even know? Why does someone taking a stroll in a park one day decide to veer down the left path instead of the right one that they always have strolled down in the past? Why does one person laugh at a joke but not the other? Why does one decide to streak during a college football game? Why choose the numbers 9,14,34,42,55for a lotto ticket as opposed to 8,13,33,41,54? Why DOES that damn monkey keep banging on the keyboard?
You probably could come up with an answer for each and every one of these questions I just posed that would satisfy the requirements to NOT be random, but, you COULD NOT come up with a reason, a purpose,a cause, or prediction for EVERY occurance of action for ALL TIME before this moment or after ad infinitum and that sole fact alone causes your arguement of forethought precluding randomness to be proven wrong.
Now, onto the whole evolution thing. Evolution IS random as it might effect one but not the other. Take this example:
Two birds of the same species (we can even say they might be nest brothers) learn to seek food in a place they never have before. They need to use their beaks to pick bugs out of tree bark but their beaks are thick, rounded and short and thus are not well suited for that action. They both become accustomed to the bark pecking and it's working out for them; they are both eating well. One bird dies before reproducing while the other passes down this trick to it's young before it succumbs to death. It just so happens that the two birds (the Brothers Peck, you might call them) were ALMOST exactly alike in physical characteristics. While one had alight orange-ish colored beak (the one that died prematurely)the other, due to a RANDOM mutation or the father bird passing down his dominate gene (in a oh-my-not-another-occurance-of-random fashion) the other bird (the one who lived to a ripe old age) had a DARK almost BLACK beak. Well, a couple of thousand years later (probably more, evolution works, albeit slowly) now exists a species of bird with a narrow, slightly curved, long and BLACK beak capable of plucking out bugs with deft precision. This bird is a decendant of the one in my neat little story.
The point is the end result was a random-chance result of OTHER random-chances results. Dominate genes, mutations, the inclusion of the characteristic of determination, weather conditions, even time, place and mannerof death are all random but influencial conditionsand are but a few of the many things that can and will affect evolution on both the micro and macro scale.
To say evolution is not random is just not true.
LASTLY I would like to address the topic. IMHO, the metaphor presented isn't new or groundbreaking. It's certainly not brilliant. It also doesn't explain evolution, it merely presents the BASE concept of order out of randomness in an artistic fashion.It does do a good job of painting a picture, though.
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