1 minute ago, swansont said:

More than that might happen.

This one is not under my control, but only in yours.

It would be sad to silence a voice that tries to use the best means possible to try and bring an opposing point of view in the discussion

Just now, Luc Turpin said:

This one is not under my control, but only in yours.

It would be sad to silence a voice that tries to use the best means possible to try and bring an opposing point of view in the discussion

AI does not qualify as a “best means”

I can bring an opposing viewpoint to a lot of topics if I’m allowed to just make stuff up, or use an algorithm that does.

Just now, Luc Turpin said:

Cannot believe that you believe that this was all made up!

I give up!

You failed the most basic thing that you learn in school regarding providing references (and not using LLM to write your work).

The continued attempts at obfuscation suggests that the arguments are not made in good faith. It is trivial to provide at least the abstract, which is always freely available, or failing that, provide the full reference. As you cannot pull them up, it is clear that you could not have read the abstract. I will also note that ChatGPT likes to make up references with Gao as the first author for some weird reason. Funnily, there is actually a researcher named Gao who works on the field of LLM and imaginary references.

9 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

What I read and posted surely sounds to me like a subtle form of intention or agency or whatever you want to call it.

If a hinge moves increasingly smooth by being operated multiple times so that in the future the movement is very smooth, did the hinge act with intention?

5 minutes ago, swansont said:

Here’s an article in Nature Ecology & Evolution that’s not open access. You can still get the citation and read the abstract

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02701-y

The abstract starts (not doing the whole thing for brevity)

“The bidirectional relationship between plant species richness and community biomass is often variable and poorly resolved in natural grassland ecosystems, impeding progress in predicting impacts of environmental changes. Most biological communities have long-tailed species abundance distributions (for example, biomass, cover, number of individuals), a general property that may provide predictive power for species richness and community biomass. Here we show mathematical relationships between community characteristics and the abundance of dominant species arising from long-tailed distributions and test these predictions using observational and experimental data from 76 grassland sites across 6 continents.”

This is a good one that can go on the side of explaining apparent agency by means of mechanistic principles.

1 minute ago, swansont said:

AI does not qualify as a “best means”

Material was googled, not AI, but nothing else that I can do to convince you otherwise.

Also, at one point, AI will have to be considered in advancing science; it already does.

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

If a hinge moves more more smoothly by being operated multiple times and it then opens up more smoothly in the future, did the hinge had the intention to open more smoothly?

But what about the possibilty that the hing running smoothly affect something else in the future?

2 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

But what about the possibilty that the hing running smoothly affect something else in the future?

So you are saying just because something affect something else in the future, there must be an intention? That suggests that there is no action without intention, at which point the worm "intention" becomes meaningless.

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Material was googled, not AI, but nothing else that I can do to convince you otherwise.

No, nothing you've done till now convinced us. There is a way you can convince us, but you've already revealed that you either used AI to write the OP, or you wrote it yourself without bothering to read the reference material you cited as the basis for your post. So which is it, Luc? We're more than willing to hear good arguments made in good faith, but this seems fake and forced and not really your work in lots of ways.

Luc Turpin: even lawyers are falling into this trap.

Just one of many examples:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/27/business/chat-gpt-avianca-mata-lawyers

Lawyer apologizes for fake court citations from ChatGPT

Among the purported cases: Varghese v. China South Airlines, Martinez v. Delta Airlines, Shaboon v. EgyptAir, Petersen v. Iran Air, Miller v. United Airlines, and Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, all of which did not appear to exist to either the judge or defense, the filing said

The LLMs are not your friend.

I spent most of last night and this morning thoroughly reviewing the references I posted. Most, if not all, of the works proposing agency in evolution did not withstand scrutiny, whereas those explaining apparent agency through mechanistic principles have been more convincing. I also examined various influences on evolution, and many of the authors I encountered avoided explicitly endorsing the idea of outside factors—or agency—actively influencing the process, instead opting to skirt the notion.

There is, however, some discussion about cognition influencing evolution—such as organisms predicting outcomes—and mechanisms by which unintentional or intentional effects might shape evolutionary trajectories. These include predictive adaptive plasticity, genetic preparedness and pre-adaptation, evolvability and canalization, environmental niche construction, epigenetic inheritance, cultural transmission, evolutionary bet-hedging, and the Baldwin effect. Nonetheless, I must admit, none of these explanations are close to conclusive. While these factors suggest potential ways in which organisms or their environments might influence evolution—whether purposively or not—demonstrating a direct causal role of agency remains elusive within the current scientific framework.

Given this context, I kindly request that the moderators consider either removing my thread or relocating it to the "trash can" section of the forum, as it seems to warrant such action.

In summary, there is insufficient scientific evidence to support the concept of agency in evolution, and therefore, insufficient grounds for a meaningful debate on whether mechanistic principles or agency better explain—or even interact within—the evolutionary process.

Edited July 3Jul 3 by Luc Turpin

21 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

spent most of last night and this morning thoroughly reviewing the references I posted. Most, if not all, of the works proposing agency in evolution did not withstand scrutiny, whereas those explaining apparent agency through mechanistic principles have been more convincing.

The primary issue isn’t how convincing the words are. If it’s just fabricated, it has no merit. LLMs are programmed to make plausible-sounding explanations, but they don’t check to see if they are true. That’s why we don’t allow them here.

Material was googled, not AI, but nothing else that I can do to convince you otherwise.

The first thing Google lists to many inquiries is an AI summary, and is usually labeled as such.

Other results have links to the source, which you should be able to click on and go to, and to copy and paste. If there’s no link, it’s the AI slop.

It’s pretty obvious you were using the AI summary.

14 minutes ago, swansont said:

In my very long night of searching and discovering, the only thing that I came up with some sense of purposefullness in evolution is this:

Will not convince anyone of purpusefullness, but fun to read.

Noble is one of the very few that promotes this kind of notion.

Forbes

Evolution May Be Purposeful And It’s Freaking Scientists Out

Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene faces a formidable challenge as a biophysicist makes a case for an evolution driven by purpose, intention and a collective intelligence.

This is should also be fun to read

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/11/how-life-works-by-philip-ball-review-the-magic-of-biology

And I guess this is where the idea of cooperative molecules possibly came from (from the Forbes article):

"Xavier’s research made headlines for her discovery of emergent, cooperative networks of molecules that mutually catalyze each other's formation in ancient bacteria. These systems were first theorized by complexity scientist, Stuart Kauffman, as a candidate for the origins-of-life story that challenges gene-centrism. Xavier studied under Noble and Kauffman before launching the Origin of Life Early-Career Network (OoLEN) with over 200 young, interdisciplinary researchers from around the world. This group co-authored an inaugural scientific paper The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions.

Xavier has identified another form of intention at the cellular level of emergent systems: cooperation. She doesn’t understand why it’s acceptable to think of evolution as competitive but evidence of cooperation is considered taboo. “I think to solve life's origins, we'll need to look much more at cooperation. And emergence really brings cooperation into the scene, whether you want it or not,” says Xavier, who also sees creativity as fundamental to life. “It's so obvious, you either accept that it is true that life is creative or you don't.”

Xavier says her field is at an inflection point with gene-centrism holding back progress in health and medicine. “I think we’re completely stuck,” says Xavier. She’s actively pushing in a new direction even if she has to leave academia for the private sector to do it. “The gene-centric paradigm,” says Xavier, “That has to go. It's urgent.”

5 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Also, at one point, AI will have to be considered in advancing science; it already does.

4 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

In my very long night of searching and discovering, the only thing that I came up with some sense of purposefullness in evolution is this:

Will not convince anyone of purpusefullness, but fun to read.

Noble is one of the very few that promotes this kind of notion.

Forbes

Evolution May Be Purposeful And It’s Freaking Scientists Out

Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene faces a formidable challenge as a biophysicist makes a case for an evolution driven by purpose, intention and a collective intelligence.

This is should also be fun to read

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/11/how-life-works-by-philip-ball-review-the-magic-of-biology

And I guess this is where the idea of cooperative molecules possibly came from (from the Forbes article):

"Xavier’s research made headlines for her discovery of emergent, cooperative networks of molecules that mutually catalyze each other's formation in ancient bacteria. These systems were first theorized by complexity scientist, Stuart Kauffman, as a candidate for the origins-of-life story that challenges gene-centrism. Xavier studied under Noble and Kauffman before launching the Origin of Life Early-Career Network (OoLEN) with over 200 young, interdisciplinary researchers from around the world. This group co-authored an inaugural scientific paper The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions.

Xavier has identified another form of intention at the cellular level of emergent systems: cooperation. She doesn’t understand why it’s acceptable to think of evolution as competitive but evidence of cooperation is considered taboo. “I think to solve life's origins, we'll need to look much more at cooperation. And emergence really brings cooperation into the scene, whether you want it or not,” says Xavier, who also sees creativity as fundamental to life. “It's so obvious, you either accept that it is true that life is creative or you don't.”

Xavier says her field is at an inflection point with gene-centrism holding back progress in health and medicine. “I think we’re completely stuck,” says Xavier. She’s actively pushing in a new direction even if she has to leave academia for the private sector to do it. “The gene-centric paradigm,” says Xavier, “That has to go. It's urgent.”

So now you have changed your mind again?

The Guardian article mentioned "What is life" and Watson and Crick, Schrödinger and his cat. Nothing to do with OOL or directional Evolution.

This may be easier if you state explicitly what you think is going on with life on earth.

Are you unhappy with TOE?

Darwin?

Dawkins?

Just lay it out.

18 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Also, at one point, AI will have to be considered in advancing science; it already does.

AI is already being used, but it’s what is called machine learning. Got a bunch of data and want to see if there’s a subtle pattern? Computers can do that.

LLMs can only re-hash what we’ve already written down, and does so imperfectly (to say the least) and they don’t think, so I’m not seeing how anyone can say they could advance science.

I go where the evidence goes, so yes I changed my mind, because that is how it should be.

And I am changing my mind again.

See below, read some of it and then tell me that there is no evidence for purpose in evolution and that nobody believes in this stuff.

Let's have a discussion after that and see where it goes- to pinball1970

1 hour ago, pinball1970 said:

So now you have changed your mind again?

The Guardian article mentioned "What is life" and Watson and Crick, Schrödinger and his cat. Nothing to do with OOL or directional Evolution.

This may be easier if you state explicitly what you think is going on with life on earth.

Are you unhappy with TOE?

Darwin?

Dawkins?

Just lay it out.

By clicking on this link and then clicking on the PDF book button, all is there to defend, with ample evidence, that evolution might very well have a purpose.

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5634/Evolution-On-Purpose-Teleonomy-in-Living-Systems

Here is but a few of the references cited in the document that imply purpose in evolution

Most links go directly to the abstract of the article that is being referenced, so no fooliing around this time.

And all of the authors that I referenced in my original post are mostly there, but this time with functionning links.

Corning, P. A. (2014). Evolution “on purpose”: How behaviour has shaped the evolutionary process. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 112, 242–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/bij.12061

 

Corning, P. A. (2019). Teleonomy and the proximate-ultimate distinction revisited. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 127 (4), 912–916. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blz087

 

Laland, K. N., Uller, T., Feldman, M. W., Sterelny, K., Müller, G. B., Moczek, A., Jablonka, E., & Odling-Smee, J. (2014). Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? (Yes, urgently.). Nature, 514(7521), 161–164. https://doi.org /10.1038/514161a

 

Walsh, D. M. (2015). Organisms, agency, and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Gilroy, S., & Trewavas, A. (2022). Agency, teleonomy and signal transduction in plant systems. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, blac021. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blac021.

 

Jablonka, E. (2013). Epigenetic inheritance and plasticity: The responsive germline. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 111, 99–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2012.08.014

Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (2014). Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life (rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

Kauffman, S. A. (2019). A world beyond physics: The emergence and evolution of life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, F. J., & Myles, S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews, Genetics, 11, 137–148

 

Okasha, S. (2018). Agents and goals in evolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

 

Shapiro, J. A. (2013). How life changes itself: The read-write (rw) genome. Physics of Life Reviews, 10, 287–323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.07.001

Shell, W. A., Steffen, M. A., Pare, H. K., Seetharam, A. S., Severin, A. J., Toth, A. L., & Rehan, S. M. (2021). Sociality sculpts similar patterns of molecular evolution in two independently evolved lineages of eusocial bees. Communications Biology, 4, 253. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01770-6

 

Waring, T. M., & Wood, Z. T. 2021. Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288, 20210538. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.053

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

AI is already being used, but it’s what is called machine learning. Got a bunch of data and want to see if there’s a subtle pattern? Computers can do that.

LLMs can only re-hash what we’ve already written down, and does so imperfectly (to say the least) and they don’t think, so I’m not seeing how anyone can say they could advance science.

Just posted something that might be interesting to you.

No AI no LLMs

And thank you for indicating the difference.

Edited July 3Jul 3 by Luc Turpin

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

Just posted something that might be interesting to you.

It’s a start. But it’s still someone else - not you - making the argument, and all the material is somewhere else. “Go read this book” is fine for a book club site, I guess, but we expect discussion to take place here. And you’ve been here long enough that you can’t claim ignorance of the rules.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

References need a page number, and if it’s a journal, an issue number or month

I based this post on abstracts and summaries. Isn’t that at least sufficient to suggest, in general terms, and in the Speculations section, that there may be another side to the story? I attempted to consult full published papers, but most were either inaccessible or locked behind paywalls.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

It’s a start. But it’s still someone else - not you - making the argument, and all the material is somewhere else. “Go read this book” is fine for a book club site, I guess, but we expect discussion to take place here. And you’ve been here long enough that you can’t claim ignorance of the rules.

Let me read the document and then I will be making my own argument on the matter.

5 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

I based this post on abstracts and summaries. Isn’t that at least sufficient to suggest, in general terms, and in the Speculations section, that there may be another side to the story? I attempted to consult full published papers, but most were either inaccessible or locked behind paywalls.

There is another side but the question is if there is empirical support for a teleological explanation of any sort of selection. Evolutionary theory, with its present strong empirical foundation seems to be the opposite of a teleological explanation. The former qualifies as a scientific theory, the latter is a philosophical conjecture. It's very important to understand this distinction before proceeding further.

I find teleologically-driven evolution as a kind of 'god-of-the gaps' crutch when people reach an impasse in explaining aspects of nature that have not yet been fully described.

42 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

based this post on abstracts and summaries. Isn’t that at least sufficient to suggest, in general terms, and in the Speculations section, that there may be another side to the story? I attempted to consult full published papers, but most were either inaccessible or locked behind paywalls.

No. Speculations merely means that it’s not mainstream. It does not mean guess or unsupported conjecture. Rigor is still required - scientific evidence, specific predictions, falsifiability. It also means familiarity with the mainstream ideas you want to supplant, and you’ve repeatedly fallen short of that.

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

No. Speculations merely means that it’s not mainstream. It does not mean guess or unsupported conjecture. Rigor is still required - scientific evidence, specific predictions, falsifiability. It also means familiarity with the mainstream ideas you want to supplant, and you’ve repeatedly fallen short of that.

Noted

55 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

I based this post on abstracts and summaries

I also have to wonder whose summaries. All of that would have to be linked.

37 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

I find teleologically-driven evolution as a kind of 'god-of-the gaps' crutch when people reach an impasse in explaining aspects of nature that have not yet been fully described.

Right. I wonder how such things are falsifiable. Seems like concluding the flashing light in the sky is an alien.

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

There is another side but the question is if there is empirical support for a teleological explanation of any sort of selection. Evolutionary theory, with its present strong empirical foundation seems to be the opposite of a teleological explanation. The former qualifies as a scientific theory, the latter is a philosophical conjecture. It's very important to understand this distinction before proceeding further.

There is no empirical support for a teleological explanation, but there is an impressive amount of evidence suggesting that evolution might have a purpose. I don't believe that God needs to be involved in that purposefulness.

4 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

There is no empirical support for a teleological explanation, but there is an impressive amount of evidence suggesting that evolution might have a purpose.

The only purpose is taking advantage of the changes in allele frequency within a population over a great deal of time. Why do you need something more? What about Earth's species do you feel is lacking due to this process?

47 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

The only purpose is taking advantage of the changes in allele frequency within a population over a great deal of time.

Even less than that. Evolution is basically just what we call the process by which allele frequency changes with time. It is like watching a pot boil and try to derive intention of the pot and its purpose. Yet all that happened is that a heat source transferred energy into the liquid. It did not boil because the pot really, really wanted it.

Evolution is just the consequence of things happening to the gene poll when certain conditions are met present (basically, deviation from Hardy-Weinberg conditions). If you put together a combination of mechanisms, such as mutations, non-random mating, gene flow, and selection, the gene pool will change.

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Right. I wonder how such things are falsifiable. Seems like concluding the flashing light in the sky is an alien.

That's the long and the short of It, I think. It's interesting to me how many people can't leave unknown answers to questions on nature alone and have to make something up.

Edited July 4Jul 4 by StringJunky

4 hours ago, swansont said:

No. Speculations merely means that it’s not mainstream. It does not mean guess or unsupported conjecture. Rigor is still required - scientific evidence, specific predictions, falsifiability. It also means familiarity with the mainstream ideas you want to supplant, and you’ve repeatedly fallen short of that.

May I add 'or even extend' ?