Help with inheritence.

[Nick Thompson]

Thank you, Russell, for your attempt to meet me half way here.  I have
discovered again and again
that, propositions which make little sense to me when I encounter them in
FRIAM, become
comprehensible over time if I can struggle with the proposition maker to
find a common language.

So I hope you will stick with me here, although I would completely
understand if you lost patience.

I THINK what you are saying here, translated into my terms, is that
complexity does have an
alternative to bean bag genetics for accounting for the similarity between
parents and offspring.
If I am correct in my surmise, then it is VERY important for me to try and
figure out what is going
on here.  

Particular comments below in CAPS.  I promise I am not SHOUTING.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
 [hidden email]


> [Original Message]
> From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>
> To: <[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Date: 1/26/2005 1:40:40 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Help with inheritance.
>
> I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "Is there a complexity theory
> of evolution without inheritance", but I know of no evolutionary
> process studied in complex systems research that doesn't have
> inheritance.

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE SPECIFIC.   BEYOND HAND WAVING BY BRIAN GOODWIN IN
"LEOPARDS SPOTS",
HAS ANY COMPLEXITY TYPE EVER IMAGINED AN EXPLANATION OF THE CORRELATION OF
TRAITS
BETWEEN PARENTS AND OFFSPRING THAT DID NOT MAKE USE OF BEAN BAG GENETICS.

>
> Consider an arbitrary irreversible process in a quantum multiverse
> setting. Since quantum processes are reversible (unitary),
> irreversibility comes about through the differentiation of the
> observed "worlds". We have a process that is evolutionary by
> Lewontin's 3 criteria:
>
> 1) Variation of succession states (through differentiation)
> 2) Selection (via observer selection, or "anthropic selection")
> 3) Inheritance (via continuity of the underlying quantum dynamics)

IF I UNDERSTAND YOU CORRECTLY THIS WOULD BE AN EXAMPLE OF AN INHERITANCE
SYSTEM IN THE DEPTHS OF QUANTUM THEORY, BUT UNLESS QUANTUM THEORY CAN PLAY
A ROLE
IN EXPLAINING THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PARENTS AND THEIR OFFSPRING, OR
UNLESS IT
CAN SERVE A MODEL THAT WOULD PLAY SUCH A ROLE, THEN i THINK i AM BACK WHERE
i STARTED,
AREN'T i?  
>
> I have not attempted to analyse the case if the Many Worlds
> Interpretation were not true, but being an "interpretation" it
> shouldn't matter in some sense.

I HAD A GO AT THE MANY WORLDS INTERPRETATION ON THE WEB AND MY MIND WAS
INSTANTLY BOGGLED.
SEE IF STEVE AND THE OTHERS CAN BANG IT INTO MY HEAD TOMORROW.

 So I'm lead to the conclusion that any
> arbitrary irreversible process is "evolutionary", which by a curious
> twist of fate was exactly what the term "evolution" meant pre-Darwin.

THANKS, RUSSELL

NICK
>
>   Cheers
>
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 02:04:56PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Dear Friamers,
> >
> > Everything that you-all are having me read  undermines the notion of
natural selection.  But it does so by undermining genetic inheritance, the
idea that because of genetic material passed from parent to offspring,
offspring will differentially resemble.  I would have thought that of all
the premises on which natural selection was based, the premise of family
resemblance was the most secure.  I have two questions, Does complexity
have an alternative theory of inheritance?  Does complexity have an
evolutionary theory in which inheritance plays not significant part?

> >
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> A/Prof Russell Standish             Director
> High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone [phone]
(mobile)
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052                     Fax   [phone] (")
> Australia             [hidden email]            
> Room 2075, Red Centre                  
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
>             International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Russell Standish]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 11:14:55PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Thank you, Russell, for your attempt to meet me half way here.  I have
> discovered again and again
> that, propositions which make little sense to me when I encounter them in
> FRIAM, become
> comprehensible over time if I can struggle with the proposition maker to
> find a common language.
>
> So I hope you will stick with me here, although I would completely
> understand if you lost patience.
>
> I THINK what you are saying here, translated into my terms, is that
> complexity does have an
> alternative to bean bag genetics for accounting for the similarity between
> parents and offspring.

I think any mechanism that accounts for similarities between
"generations" suffices.

There is presumably also some selection effects for population
diversity (ie to be a little bit different from your peers), as
homogenous populations are particularly vulnerable to parasitism. This
would be one of the group selection effects.

> If I am correct in my surmise, then it is VERY important for me to try and
> figure out what is going
> on here.  
>

...

> > Consider an arbitrary irreversible process in a quantum multiverse
> > setting. Since quantum processes are reversible (unitary),
> > irreversibility comes about through the differentiation of the
> > observed "worlds". We have a process that is evolutionary by
> > Lewontin's 3 criteria:
> >
> > 1) Variation of succession states (through differentiation)
> > 2) Selection (via observer selection, or "anthropic selection")
> > 3) Inheritance (via continuity of the underlying quantum dynamics)
>
> IF I UNDERSTAND YOU CORRECTLY THIS WOULD BE AN EXAMPLE OF AN INHERITANCE
> SYSTEM IN THE DEPTHS OF QUANTUM THEORY, BUT UNLESS QUANTUM THEORY CAN PLAY
> A ROLE
> IN EXPLAINING THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PARENTS AND THEIR OFFSPRING, OR
> UNLESS IT
> CAN SERVE A MODEL THAT WOULD PLAY SUCH A ROLE, THEN i THINK i AM BACK WHERE
> i STARTED,
> AREN'T i?  

These are all examples of information storage systems. In quantum
systems, memory is typically lost very quickly. At higher levels of
organisation, dynamical systems exhibit greater permanence of memory
through the use of attractors. Finally genetic systems add a whole
level of enzymatic repair to improve the retention of memory over
millions of years.


--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish             Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone [phone] (mobile)
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                     Fax   [phone] (")
Australia             [hidden email]            
Room 2075, Red Centre                    http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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