>yes, I do not exist randomly. A is not A occasionally. Prof. Beckmann clearly was a fan on the Copenhagen interpretation, which is inconsistent with Rand and 400 plus years of scientific scholarship

As posted earlier, that's bunk. Whether the Copenhagen Interpretation is ultimately correct or not, it is not inconsistent with 400 years of western science, the essence of which is hypothesis+experimentation+revision of hypothesis (or throwing out the hypothesis); the essence of western science was never mechanical determinism. The idea of a "clockwork universe" was thrown out long ago.

Now whether or not mechanical determinism is essential to Rand's metaphysics is a different issue from whether or not mechanical determinism is essential to 400 years of western science. If Objectivism really does assume, and rely on, mechanical causality as the only kind of causality operating in the universe, then it is not only over 100 years behind the times, but it is downright anti-scientific . . . and it has been justly accused of these things by a number of scientists who are otherwise sympathetic to other parts of Objectivism.

And as Petr Beckmann points out, strict mechanical causal laws can always be derived from statistical laws (as an idealized case), the latter including much more information about multiple measurements of phenomena than a simple deterministic function.

The main point of Beckmann's insight is that probability represents a real metaphysical fact in the universe, and is not some sort of blunt tool to help us out when we lack "exact" information about something.

>some genes are only expressed as a result of a environmental stress

True. But those genes represent genetic information that is already in the genome, even though they are "switched off" until some environmental trigger switches them on. Since they are already part of the genetic operating system, they obviously are not the result of random mutations, and therefore represent a non-Darwinian cause of modification in the organism.

And, of course, while latent genetic information can help an organism adapt to some new environmental situation, it always remains the same organism it was before the new information became expressed: latent genes don't morph fruit flies into honey bees, bears into whales, or tree shrews into human beings.

>Where did the intelligent aliens come from?

In Crick's scenario, obviously from still earlier intelligent aliens, ad infinitum. "A is A" says nothing about infinite regression.

What "A is A" would preclude, however, is the materialist scenario — one that most Objectivists probably have faith in — where matter and energy presumably always existed (even though they are material effects, nothing apparently caused them), and contrary to a supreme natural law known as thermal entropy, they nevertheless contradicted that all-encompassing natural law and started organizing themselves into highly ordered hierarchical systems with multiple information feedback loops known as "biological organisms capable of reproduction."

"A is A" says nothing about infinity. It does say something about violation of natural law: it says it can't happen without violating identity.

Regarding ratchets:

That's Richard Dawkins' term, as well as the metaphor of pushing an organism up Mount Improbable.

As mentioned earlier, Darwin's original idea of natural selection exercising some sort of creative power over evolution is bunk. Most biologists today concede that natural selection is a conserving force, not a creative one. It function to weed out organisms whose newly appearing trait or traits (from mutation) cause it to deviate one way or the other from the mainstream of the original species population. It's a weeding-out mechanism to return a species to its norm; not a creative mechanism to maintain new traits that threaten to destabilize a given population by bringing into existence some new species.

>That was superb!

Thanks, amigo!

>What are the two alphabets?. I want to be certain.

The genetic code is a mapping between two biochemical alphabets:

alphabet 1) 64 combinations of 4 nucleotides (also called "bases"): adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine arranged in groups of three. Each group of three is called a "codon" (a fundamental code-unit, or biochemical code-letter, which maps to an amino acid floating around freely in the cell cytoplasm outside the nucleus). The nucleotides in DNA are the "rungs" or "steps" in the DNA helix (the "banisters" that twist in a helical shape are a simple sugar called ribose) and are usually abbreviated by their first letters, ACGT. Though ACGT pair together in certain ways, the fact remains that any nucleotide can, in principle, be in any position along the helix, which means there are 4 possibilities (A or C or G or T) for the first part of a codon triplet, 4 possibilities for a 2nd part of a codon triplet, and 4 possibilities for a 3rd part of the codon triplet; the total number of possibilities being 4x4x4 = 64.

So the first alphabet is a 64-character alphabet of codons — each codon a triplet of bases — comprising the rungs of the DNA molecule.

alphabet 2) 22 amino acids used by biological organisms (humans only require 20 of these, but other species need one or both of the remaining two). The amino acids are:

1. Histidine
2. Isoleucine
3. Leucine
4. Lysine
5. Methionine
6. Phenylalanine
7. Threonine
8. Tryptophan
9. Valine
10. Alanine
11. Arginine
12. Aspartic acid
13. Cysteine
14. Glutamic acid
15. Glutamine
16. Glycine
17. Proline
18. Serine
19. Tyrosine
20. Asparagine
21. Selenocysteine
22. Pyrrolysine

Each of these amino acids floats around in the cell body (if they are "essential amino acids" they come from food, or some outside source; if they are "nonessential", they are manufactured from scratch by the organism's own biochemistry). Think of them as if they were individual letters stamped on wooden blocks; they are potentially words, but not without being connected into a meaningful sequence.

Each codon in DNA symbolically represents one of those amino acids (in fact, there's a lot redundancy built into the codon alphabet: several different triplets might symbolically represent one and the same amino acid). For example, a particular codon triplet might be "Guanine-Cytosine-Adenosine" abbreviated "GCA", which would be three rungs (considered as one unit) in sequence along the DNA helix. That triplet — "GCA" — symbolically represents the amino acid "alanine" floating around somewhere in the cell's cytoplasm.

The way the genetic code works is like this:

The DNA molecule splits down the middle and imprints one side of itself — with all the triplet codons — into a molecular template called "messenger RNA" or "mRNA." mRNA is simply a single strand, not a double one (there's also a slight chemical change to one of the nucleotides, with thymine in DNA being replaced by uracil in RNA). mRNA then literally wiggles out like a snake from the nucleus through a port-hole that opens up, and wends its way to cellular machine called the ribosome. The ribosome is very much like an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder: mRNA threads itself into one opening in the ribosome (think of the opening as something like the "play head" in those old tape recorders), and the ribosome "reads" each triplet codon symbolically representing an amino acid. Another kind of RNA called "transfer RNA" or "tRNA" attaches to each amino acid, and ***in response to*** each codon in mRNA, hauls the amino acid into another opening in the ribosome where a water molecule is removed and a cellular glue called a "peptide bond" is stuck on one side. The ribosome then "reads" the next codon triplet in the mRNA sequence and the next bit of tRNA hauls the corresponding amino acid into the ribosome, where, again, a molecule of water is removed, and it is stuck onto the tail end of the first amino acid by means of that peptide bond.

I'll link to some computer animations showing this process, but in case you were wondering, it all happens QUICKLY.

Coming out of the other side of the ribosome is this stuck-together chain of amino acids (technically called "amino acid RESIDUES" because the water molecules have been removed) sort of like a tape coming out of an old fashioned stock-ticker machine. After several hundred amino acid residues have been stuck together, the ribosome eventually "reads" a codon triplet whose meaning it interprets not as a command to retrieve another amino acid but, rather, as a command to STOP reading! At that point, it "snips" the string of residues — now called a "polypeptide" — and sends the polypeptide into another organelle called the Endoplasmic Reticulum where the specific sequence of amino acid residues interact with either water molecules or lipid molecules and folds into a complex 3-dimensional shape. The shape is determined by the sequence of amino acid residues. Once it folds correctly it can be called by its proper name: a protein. The protein molecule is then hauled by enzymes called "chaperones" to specific parts of the organism, depending on the kind of protein (blood, eye, bone, muscle heart, etc.)

Bizarre and amazing, no? Yet the really amazing part is this (and it's important to keep this mind):

At no time does mRNA (or its parent molecule, DNA) ever physically touch or materially/chemically interact with the amino acids! They are two separate physical realms, each represented by two separate alphabets: the codons by a 64-symbol alphabet (4x4x4); the amino acids by a 22-symbol alphabet (listed above).

The sequence of codon triplets along DNA (and mRNA) precisely corresponds to the sequence of amino acids that will be hauled by tRNA into the ribosome and "glued" together with peptide bonds to form polypeptides that will fold and become functional proteins.

In sum:

The genetic code is a real, true code — just like Morse Code, or ASCII computer code. It is a mapping — a relation — between 64 possible kinds of codon triplets sequenced along DNA inside the nucleus, and 22 possible kinds of amino acids, floating around in the cell body outside the nucleus. The genetic message is sent by DNA through a communication channel called "mRNA", which travels from inside the nucleus to outside the nucleus where its message is literally read off by a tape-recorder-like organelle called the ribosome. The ribosome, in concert with specific enzymes and specific "tRNA's", locate and transfer free-floating amino acids to the ribosome, which then puts them into a functional sequence (like Scrabble letters being tumbled in a rotating drum, with a hand reaching in and grabbing *specific* letters and putting them into functional sequences we call words).

Here are some computer simulations you might find interesting (and entertaining):

http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/Transl...

http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/16-tra...

http://www.wiley.com/college/boyer/04700...

That was superb! What are the two alphabets?. I want to be certain.

>Statistics are used to predict card games, coin flips, communication links and many other things because we cannot know all the conditions (usually initial conditions) of a system.

Statistics and probability are not quite the same thing, but even so, note the following:

"It was once thought that probability theory is used when our ignorance or inability prevents us from solving a problem 'exactly'. Many who are unacquainted with probability theory (or who associate it only with dice and cards) still believe this.

In fact, the precise opposite is true. The 'exact' solution, or more accurately, the 'deterministic' solution, is a special case of the general solution involving random values; it can always be obtained from the probabilistic solution (which is not as easy to obtain). Our ignorance or inability quite often forces us to abandon the probablistic approach and to restrict ourselves to the idealized case of the deterministic solution, thereby neglecting most of the information and risking a misleading answer."

— Elements of Applied Probability Theory
Petr Beckmann
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Colorado
1968

>This process may not disprove the existence of all-knowing conscious supervisors but there is no need to call on such for explanation.

Intelligent designers need not be "all-knowing"; they just need to know enough to counter the inevitable effect of thermodynamic entropy.

Life is not "extremely complicated chemistry". If it were just that, it would be completely governed by entropy considerations — which does, indeed, happen, but only after the organism is no longer alive. The chemistry of life, qua chemistry, is straightforward. Life is essentially a system of CODED CHEMISTRY — meaningful sequences of chemicals that specify other meaningful sequences of chemicals even though the two sets of sequences (call them "alphabets") never physically touch or interact in any way that could be called "chemical." The two obvious questions here are: how did each alphabet come into existence in meanigful sequences when the probabilities of forming gibberish sequences are far higher (this is the same question Chomsky and Halle asked about language)? and, how did one alphabet come to specify some other alphabet? I.e., how did the meaningful sequences get formed, and how did the code-relation between sets of sequences get formed? The questions are interrelated because the formation of meaningful sequences (in DNA nucleotides and in proteins) require the prior existence of a code relation; while the existence of a code relation requires the prior existence of sequences that are biologically meaningful, i.e., functional.

Code relations between two sequenced alphabets (codons on the one hand, amino acids on the other; or English letters on the one hand, dots and dashes on the other) require intelligence and cannot be accounted for by means of purely material interactions. The creation of a sequence known as "Galt's speech" cannot be explained by reference to the chemistry of ink and the chemistry of paper, despite the fact that Galt's speech is instantiated in ink on paper.

>If you insist on deities, you have to acknowledge the lack of foresight in that members of a generation may be less suited to their environment than their parents were, many individuals die before passing on their inheritance, even species die-out. All the evidence fits a random explanation.

Only you and dbhalling have insisted that "intelligence" necessarily entails "deity." I insisted merely on intelligence, irrespective of its source.

That individual members of a population might be more suited or less suited to a change in their environmental circumstances is a fact of experience known since time immemorial and is not specific to Darwinism. None of that answers the question of how a species originated, let alone how the first living organism originated. One could be an outright Bible-thumping creationist and readily admit (without contradiction) that finches with long beaks survived better in times of drought on the Galapagos Islands than finches with short beaks.

On the other hand, I wonder how many Darwinists will admit — let alone even being aware of the fact — that when drought ends on the Galapagos Island and the rains reapper, the "newly evolved" long-beaked finches disappear back into the extreme statistical minority of the overall finch population, and the short-beaked finches reestablish themselves as once again "the most fit." The moral of the story is as clear as it is embarrassing for the Darwinian hypthesis: despite a change in the environment, there has been zero net evolution over time; just a statistical fluctation about a mean.

I had to dust off some dusty stuff, but for me it makes it more understandable. I am going to have review Crick on evolution.

>They rely on the idea that it is a right triangle - Euclidean geometry

Obviously not. There are no right-triangles in non-Euclidean geometry.

>>>As stated it is a mimic of evolution by natural selection.

GAs have been around for a long time, and they all suffer from the same problem: to the extent that they "prove" natural selection really does work, their designers have all included some kind of forward-looking, front-loaded coding, which biases the selection process toward a pre-ordained result; conversely, to the extent that the code really does make each modification random, and each selection certain, the results have been gibberish.

By the way, most biologists today believe that natural selection is strictly a "weeding out" process: it functions to remove organisms whose random modifications have strayed too far from the statistical norm of the overall population. Thus, natural selection no longer has the "ratcheting up Mt. Improbable" that it had in classical Darwinism.

>>>Modifications can happen simultaneously.

So? Whether you toss two coins sequentially or simultaneously, the odds of any particular H/T combination are still the same: 1-in-4. That's because whether the tosses occur one after the after or both at the same time, they are each *independent*, so their respective probabilities still have to be multiplied.

>>>The article clearly states "nd in fact, the Pythagorean theorem given above does not hold in a non-Euclidean geometry"

If you understood what you were reading you'd grasp that these are non-Euclidean proofs of the Pythagorean theorem (just as the argument states), i.e., proofs that do not rely on Euclidean axioms to arrive at the same truth as one that does rely on Euclidean axioms.