[jamesrcole]

You're assuming it's a matter of some threshold (presumably of something like "complexity").

We have good reason to think that anything like "will" (leaving aside "free will" here, and just taking about things like the ability to achieve ends by developing plans and utilising information about the state of the environment) requires specific information processing capabilities. Capabilities that a process like natural selection does not have.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Or a threshold in information processing capabilities, yes. But could you describe these information processing capabilities?

Since evolution does process information about iterative states, it's not the mere existence of feedback, so there must be some threshold in capabilities that requires crossing.

Please describe them in a manner that includes or excludes as you see fit babies, cats, and bacteria but doesn't leave it a continuum (ie, there must be a cutoff where on one side you have some and the other none).

[jamesrcole]

Describing how evolution works, and why it is completely blind, is not something for the size constraints of a HN comment. I'd recommend books like Dawkin's "The Blind Watchmaker" or "Climbing Mount Improbable", or Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" for good, readable descriptions.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

I think it is a bit presumptuous to say that evolution is completely blind. Here is a paper that, based on deep learning, explores how evolution can be seen as learning from previous experience like a neural net.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/why-evolution-may-be-intelligent-b... [Summary]

http://eegjournalclub.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/5/0/26509069/wa... [Actual Paper]

I often wonder if there are "intelligences" at the stellar scale or above and if they existed, would we have the lobes to be aware of their existence.

[fenomas]

I think the point here was more that saying people have will but evolution doesn't is a lot like saying fish swim but submarines don't. Obviously the two can be distinguished, but we distinguish them because we look at the mechanisms by which the function - whereas if we only looked at the externalities, we might consider them one and the same.

Personally I think it's quite an interesting point; much moreso than the point you seem to have replied to (i.e. the notion that evolution isn't blind, which I don't think GP was arguing by any stretch).

[SomeStupidPoint]

I always found it interesting to ask if my fish toy swims: it has a fish shape and propels itself through the water by wiggling its tail.

Similarly, if cephalopods swim. And if they do, why not jetskis?

Also, I was arguing it, but mostly to see the responses -- everyone seems so sure it is, and yet, the answers come down to "because it doesn't remind me of monkey cognition". (Similar to why I asked about animism -- everyone is so sure it was wrong, but doesn't seem to know why.)

[SomeStupidPoint]

I'm well aware of how evolution works. I disagree with your assessment that it's any blinder of a process than your own will is.

I'm especially skeptical when you can't even describe the distinction in the span of a few paragraphs and instead resort to ad hominems.

[vectorpush]

> I disagree with your assessment that it's any blinder of a process than your own will is.

I understand what you're saying, but the two concepts cannot be effectively compared. An organism's "will" is a label for the reactive tendencies we observe in physical systems that exhibit homeostasis, whereas evolution is the description of a physical process that is perpetually ongoing and has no physically discrete meaning.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Your commemt is no more insightful than "I understand how to draw a box around one of them".

"You" as an entity are really just a process emergent from chemical reactions on some area, and your "will" is just the result of feedback between many regions of that process and outside stimuli.

Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.

I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.

Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.

Further, you (just as evolution) are ongoing until you're not, and "physically discrete meaning" sounds like a dressed up "well, I just know it when I see it".

[vectorpush]

> You" as an entity are really just a process emergent from chemical reactions on some area, and your "will" is just the result of feedback between many regions of that process and outside stimuli.

Agreed.

> Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.

Disagree. Evolution does not "respond to external stimuli", there is no "internal" or "external" as far as evolution is concerned, that's like saying "erosion responds to external stimuli"; "it" does not respond, "it" is a description of a process.

> I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.

I can't draw a box around it because it is not a thing with a position in space unlike "you" which is.

> Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.

Of course it does, if words are to have any meaning at all. Whatever it is you're trying to describe that is common between an organism and the description of physical process is not called "will" by any useful definition of the word. It's like if I said "evolution has no guiding principles" and you replied "well neither do humans really because our 'guiding principles' are just the result of a deterministic evolutionary process", but that's not true because "guiding principles" is a human concept that applies to beings that reason about their environment, even if the foundation of that reasoning is determined by constituent factors.

[jamesrcole]

First, what ad hominems? Show me what you're referring to.

I think you misunderstand what I said. The sort of information processing in something like a nervous system can hardly be characterised as blind.

Also, if it can easily be done in a few paragraphs then why did people have to write books hundreds of pages long (which still get misunderstood)?

[goatlover]

> Since evolution does process information about iterative states

Evolution is a computer?

> Please describe them in a manner that includes or excludes as you see fit babies, cats, and bacteria but doesn't leave it a continuum

What's the cutoff between a heap of and non-heap?

[SomeStupidPoint]

Evolution does compute in the broad sense, yes.

My exact point is there isn't such a meaningful distinction. I'm challenging people who think there is a distinction to elaborate on that.