Table Of Contents
How "Chance" works in Evolution
Greetings fellow e-Skepticers, and happy summer solstice, the longest day of
the year. May the sun god continue to shine on us all. The following is a
result of a recent interesting coincidence that goes a long way toward
understanding on evolution works.
DARWIN, HAMLET, AND HOW EVOLUTION WORKS:
AN INTERESTING (BUT NOT UNEXPECTED) COINCIDENCE
By Michael Shermer
Here is an interesting coincidence on Darwin, Hamlet, and how evolution
works, that itself needs no "intelligent designer" to explain.
In the latest issue of Scientific American, the Editor-in-Chief John Rennie
wrote a brilliant article entitled "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense,"
debunking creationist arguments
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588
EED F&pageNumber=4&catID=2). In that article he used an example from my book,
Why People Believe Weird Things, from Chapter 10 "Confronting Creationists:
Twenty-Five Creationist Arguments, Twenty-Five Evolutionist Answers" (also
published as a separate pamphlet and available at www.skeptic.com). In that
chapter I cite a computer program designed and run by a friend and colleague
of mine when I was teaching at Glendale College, Richard Hardison, on how
long it would take a monkey to randomly type "To be or not to be." It would
take 26 to the power of 13 trials for success, which is 16 times as great as
the total number of seconds that have elapsed in the 4.5 billion years of our
solar system. But Hardison designed a computer program that acts like natural
selection: it preserved the gains and eradicated the mistakes. In other
words, the computer "selected" for or against letters as they were randomly
produced (if "T" preserve, if "Z" skip), and took an average of only 335.2
trials to produce the sequence TOBEORNOTTOBE. It took only 90 seconds.
Hardison calculated that the entire Hamlet play could be done in 4.5 days.
This appeared in Richard Hardison's spiral-bound course reading material in
1984 for a course he and I co-taught on the history of great ideas; it was
then published in 1985 in book form as "Upon the Shoulders of Giants,"
(University Press of America) published in a second edition in 1988 (as cited
in my own book).
If that computer sequence sounds familiar to readers, it is because Richard
Dawkins did something very similar in his book The Blind Watchmaker, except
he used a different phrase--"Methinks it is like a weasel"--completely
independent of Hardison, and neither one of them knew about the other's
program. Dawkins book came out in 1986; he produced his program in 1984.
There is no way he could have known about Hardison's work because it wasn't
published in any form that would have been available to anyone but the
students in our class. And Hardison didn't know about Dawkins' program.
But how interesting or unusual a coincidence is this? Dawkins and I had an
e-mail exchange about that, and here is his rather satisfactory explanation
requiring neither Jungian synchronicity nor paranormal shenanigans:
"Thank you for clearing up the mystery. Yes, the coincidence is fascinating.
But it is not all THAT surprising, and you have spotted that it makes a good
lesson in paranormal debunking. Once one has grasped (from Darwin) the
paramount importance of ratcheted CUMULATIVE selection when faced with the
Argument from Statistical Improbability, one's thoughts naturally turn to the
famous monkeys who have so often been used to dramatise that Argument. It
becomes the obvious simulation to do, to get the point across to doubters. It
can easily be done with a little BASIC program, and that is what both
Hardison and I did, at what must have been almost exactly the same time, 1984
or 1985. As for the superficial details, those pesky monkeys have always
typed Shakespeare. Hamlet is his most famous play. To Be or Not to Be is the
most famous passage from that play. I would probably have chosen it myself,
except that I thought the dialogue between Hamlet and Horatio on chance
resemblances in clouds would make a neat intro: hence Methinks it is like a
Weasel.
Reverting to Richard Hardison, the one thing he did which I did not (and I am
now kicking myself for not thinking of it) was to extrapolate to the time it
would take to type the entire play. The speed at which computers happened to
run in 1985 is, of course, not particularly interesting now: just an
arbitrary point on the Moore's Law curve. But it would now be interesting to
do the extrapolation again for (a) modern computers and (b) monkeys. Make
some sort of conservative estimate for how much slower a monkey is than a
computer. 4.5 days would expand to -- what? -- tens of millions of years?
Hundreds of millions? It will still be very very short compared to the random
monkey without cumulative selection." ---------------------- Here is the
section from Hardison's 1985 edition, with the narrative passage from pages
123-124 and the computer program from Appendix E. I typed the entire thing in
for interested readers. Remember, this program was for a computer from the
early 1980s--very primitive!
IN "UPON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS" BY RICHARD HARDISON, 1985, University Press
of America, pp. 123-124:
"Taking exception to the view that orderliness could be chance-determined,
the
anti-evolutionists point out that while the monkeys might type Hamlet in
theory, they could not do so in the real world, for the time required would
be
much too great.
Let us imagine an intrepid monkey punching away at a typewriter keyboard. For
the monkey to stumble onto just the few words, "To Be Or Not To Be" would
require a prohibitive improbability. Mathematical expectancy would lead us to
anticipate some 26 to the 13th power number of trials before the litttle
rascal prints out the desired sequence and sends his typewriter off for a
much-needed ribbon replacement. This number of trials is so large that it is
roughly 16 times as great as the total number of seconds that have elapsed in
the four and one half billion years of the solar system's existence.
These enormous numbers apply for just the first 13 letters of Hamlet's
siloloquy, and for every additional letter, the odds against continued
success grow by leaps and bounds. More significant still is the fact that
producing Hamlet is child's play when compared with constructing the human
eye
or inventing the process of reproduction. Rather discouraging.
However, this just isn't the way evolution works. To the contrary, nature
keeps the successes and discards the failures. The gains are perpetuated, so
to continue the typewriter analogy, when our simian friend happens upon a T,
that letter is kept and he goes on randomly typing until he strikes an O,
which in turn is retained. And so on.
What then are the chances of arriving at the opening line of Hamlet's
question with this scheme of modified randomness? At first glance, this may
seem the kind of problem that is not suited to calculation (since one end of
the distribution curve is infinite) but it is possible, using a simple
formula
that is proved by calculus and infinite geometric series, to arrive at the
theoretical number of trials that would be expected (338), and it is also
possible to program a computer to test the calculations empirically. Let us
have the computer randomize alphabet selection until a T is drawn. Then it
will be programmed to do the same for the O and continue accordingly for the
desired 13 letters. Interested readers should consult APPENDIX E for a print
out of the "Basic" program that will perform this test of empirical
probability ten successive times.
When running the program through a home computer 1000 times, it developed
that
an average of 335.2 trials were required in order to produce the sequence of
letters "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Small computers do not have perfect random number
generators, but the outcome gives reasonable support to the theoretical
expectancy of 338. Clearly 338 is a number of vastly different magnitude than
the number of seconds that have elapsed in the history of the solar system.
Extending this computer program so that it would construct the entire play
would be a task of Herculean proportions, but if this were done, the actual
writing of the play would require only about four and one half days for the
relatively slow home computers of today."
THE COMPUTER PROGRAM IN APPENDIX E IN "UPON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS" BY
RICHARD HARDISON
10 REM 1984 R. HARDISON
11 PRINT "RANDOMIZING ALPHABET"
12 PRINT "WRITE HAMLET, KEEPING"
13 PRINT "SUCCESSES."
14 PRINT :; REM N-COUNTER: # OF TRIALS
15 REM T=COUNTER:REUSE "TO BE"
16 PRINT "SUBROUTINE TO
17 PRINT "RANDOMIZE AND SELECT"
18 PRINT "LETTER"
30 N = 0
40 FOR G = 1 TO 10
50 T = 0
60 GOTO 80
70 X = INT (26 * RND (1)) + 1: RETURN
80 GOSUB 70
90 N = N + 1
100 IF X = 20 THEN PRINT "T": IF X = 20 THEN GOTO 120
110 GOTO 60
120 N = N + 1
130 GOSUB 70
140 IF X = 15 THEN PRINT "O": IF X = 15 THEN PRINT : IF X = 15 THEN GOTO 160
150 GOTO 120 160 N = N + 1 170 GOSUB 70 180 IF X = 2 THEN PRINT "B": IF X = 2
THEN GOTO 200 190 GOTO 160 200 N = N + 1 210 GOSUB 70 220 IF X = 5 THEN PRINT
"E": IF X = 5 THEN PRINT : IF X = 5 THEN GOTO 240 230 GOTO 200 240 T = T + 1
250 IF T = 2 THEN GOTO 460 260 N = N + 1 270 GOSUB 70 280 IF X = 15 THEN
PRINT
"O": IF X = 15 THEN GOTO 300 290 GOTO 260 300 N = N + 1 310 GOSUB 70 320 IF X
= 18 THEN PRINT "R": IF X = 18 THEN GOTO 340 330 GOTO 300 340 N = N + 1 350
GOSUB 70 360 IF X = 14 THEN PRINT "N": IF X = 14 THEN GOTO 380 370 GOTO 340
380 N = N + 1 390 GOSUB 70 400 IF X = 15 THEN PRINT "O": IF X = 15 THEN GOTO
420 410 GOTO 380 420 N = N + 1 430 GOSUB 70 440 IF X = 20 THEN PRINT "T": IF
X
= 20 THEN PRINT : IF X = 20 THEN GOTO 60 450 GOTO 420 460 PRINT "N=";N;" KEYS
PRESSED TO WRITE 'TO BE OR NOT TO BE'" 470 PRINT "FOR";G;" RUN(S) OF PROGRAM"
480 PRINT 490 NEXT G 500 END 510 REM IF THE PROGRAM WERE 511 REM WRITTEN TO
INCLUDE 512 REM PUNCTUATION MARKS ETC. 513 REM THE PROGRAM WOULD 514 REM
TAKE LONGER, BUT WOULD 515 REM STILL NOT BE PROHIBI- 516 REM TIVE 517 PRINT
518 PRINT "WITH 3000 RUNS, THE MEAN" 519 PRINT "# of trials=333" 520 PRINT
"THE MEAN TIME REQUIRED" 521 PRINT "WAS .14 MINUTES TO PRINT" 522 PRINT
"TOBEORNOTTOBE" ------------------------------- From this analysis of Darwin,
Hamlet, Dawkins, Hardison, coincidence, and selective evolution, we may
conclude that whether the reality of evolution is to be believed or not to be
believed, methinks it is like a weasel of truth nonetheless.
Michael Shermer
---
You are currently subscribed to skeptics as: [surgicalsteel@mindspring.com]
To
unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-skeptics-317099I@lyris.net If this
message was forwarded from a friend and you'd like to join the distribution
list (it's FREE), e-mail join-skeptics@lyris.net
------- End of forwarded message -------
Steve
---
A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.
Webdown
On 20 Jun 2002 at 9:57, Bjg912@aol.com wrote:
> This new site looks awesome.. from Ignatius Press.
> Maybe we can pass it around to some of our parishes!!!
This reminds me - I have a program here (freeware) that will download an
entire site (or more!) and set it up for offline browsing. I use it for
"bigger sites" (for example, the "Conflict Resolution" site I mentioned
yesterday) so I have it all offline whenever I want it. It does require a
small amount of tinkering with, and some minor knowledge of directory
structure is a good thing. If you're interested in it, drop me an e-mail.
Steve
---
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is
competently programmed and working smoothly, it is
completely honest. -Isaac Asimov
Catecheticalresources.com,
http://www.catecheticalresources.com/
This new site looks awesome.. from Ignatius Press.
Maybe we can pass it around to some of our parishes!!!
Blessings, Joann
Steve
---
Stop leaving and you will arrive
Stop searching and you will see
Stop running away and you will be found.
- Lao Tzu