Ever dreamed of a nice piece of software that actually tries to simulate the evolution of an universe? Ever thought it would be possible? Now after a long time of planning and writing of some source code a small group of developers goes public with their innovative project: the G System.
The G System, often simply called "G", is an effort to create exactly this: simulation of evolution. This is both, a scientific exercise and a virtual reality where many "users" can participate in an ever changing, realistic and ... evolving universe.
The goal is a virtual reality which can be experienced by users as a realistic world and as a place for scientific development with a goal of creating a realistic evolution simulation. The realism is not so much of physical reality but more of a realistic human - and especially life as a whole - evolution. This also means that nothing keeps us from creating space shuttles that allows for exploring a whole solar system, which can get quite fascinating ;)
Currently the system is in an early stage of development. We have come so far that we think it IS possible to create a realistic evolution simulation and now we want to "bootstrap" development. That means we are looking for contributers. If you are fascinated by the idea you probably already fit the requirements, fascination is what drives development forward. To get an overview of the technology that is covered/used by the project, this list should help: network layer for a "grid" of server systems as well as client connections, database systems, 3D client application with KDE integration, artificial intelligence and some common sense for evolution; Qt and KDE as base libraries. But this list is not complete, there also are many areas where no special knowledge is needed. And after all, everything can be learned.
At the moment a small demo application is already available, it currently shows that the core infrastructure works but doesn't provide much in terms of virtual reality. A later release will bring the system nearer to this goal and will let people enter this simulation experience.
For more information you can take a look at http://www.g-system.at (it is an international site, the .at domain was just easier to get in our case). The source code release and the API documentation are already available. Check out the page at KDE-apps.org!
Comments
The 5000 years ago thing is bunk. That figure came from a monk in the (don't remember when - but it was a long time ago) who tried to figure out how old the earth is by counting the generations from Adam (and how long the prophets and patriarchs lived) from clues in the bible, and followed it down to his time. It's a guess-timate, but it somehow got into popular christian mythology and has continued on to this day amongst bible-literalists.
Have any other religious folk out there considered that maybe god created the world through a process of evolution by laying down the "ground rules" that it follows and then sitting back and watching? And with regards to "Adam is the first man" thing in what context? The bible doesn't say. Maybe he's the first man of God, and not literally the first man. That's my take anyways, but it is interesting to note that writing appears on the scene 5000 years ago.
Anyone wanting a good read on the debate on the age of the earth can look here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debate-age-of-earth.html
I think the big problem with the term evolution is that it is a word applied to both observable facts AND a nineteenth-century theory designed to explain those facts.
Think of it this way. Gravity is a fact. It happens, there's no getting around it. Newton came up with a theory about how it worked. It was good, but flawed. Eventually someone came along and proved that Newton was wrong. Does this mean gravity ceased to exist? No, Newton's theory of how gravity worked was simply invalid.
Same thing goes for evolution. Darwin's explanation for how evolution worked has problems. People have developed new theories that are better than Darwin's. However, evolution still happens. It's an observable fact. The mechanism by which it operates is subject to debate.
It so happens that all scientific theories that have since replaced Darwin's evolutionary theory also lump themselves into the category of "Evolution"--because they are really more derivative theories based on Darwin's work than entire new theories.
Want a better theory than Darwin's evolution and its progeny of latter-day evolutionary theories? Sorry, there aren't any. Not a single one.
If someday all current evolutionary theories are categorically prven false, do you know what that means? Nothing. Scientists, when asked to explain how evolution works, will say "we don't know." They are simply not going to jump on some creationist hypothesis due to lack of available sound scientific theories.
This completely ignores that fact that 1) creationism and evolution and NOT MUTUALLY INCOMPATIBLE and 2) creationist theories are by their nature unprovable. If there was cold hard evidence, faith wouldn't be faith. When you start to pretend God is a quantifiable entity, you're pretty much not talking about God anymore anyway. And hiding God/creationism behind a nontheistic "intelligent design" moniker is disingenuous and doesn't do anyone any favors. You're lying to yourself and misrepresenting yourself to others. If you believe in God show some balls and admit it.
Just an FYI, but GR reduces to Newton's "G" in the low relative speed limit.
Other than that... great post!
Not to split hairs, but Newton's theory has an error in it. That error is so small that, at normal human-scale calculations, it is undetectable--but it's there. That's not saying that Newton's theory isn't amazingly accurate all things considered, but wrong is wrong, even if it's only wrong by a hair.
There's a reason kids learn Newton's theory instead of GR in high school. It's mathematically and conceptually simpler, and it's very accurate for any real-world tests they would be capable of doing.
In contrast, Darwin's theory had a lot of unneccessary rules: a very nineteenth-century "a place for everything and everything in its place" belief that each species had its own niche, and that the species only competed with itself for how best to fit that niche (precluding the possibility that two totally different species could compete for the same niche)
Also, Darwin's theory staked a lot on the belief that evolution occurs infrequently and randomly, and only the fit survive. Modern theories allow for evolution to occur in fits and starts, with long periods of no evolution at all, sometimes nonrandomly triggered by major climate change, plague, etc.
The most important thing is that evolution is NOT an alternative to "intelligent design". It's an alternative to "we don't know". "Intelligent design" is an alternative to "the scientific process". Want a new theory? Come up with one that can be tested. If you can't do that, don't waste our time.
Well, I may have been splitting hairs, but the flaw only makes it less correct, not, wrong.
So your statement:
"but wrong is wrong, even if it's only wrong by a hair."
...is false, in that sense.
General Relativity is expected to have a critical mathematical flaw in it, precludes it from compatiblilty with QFT, but that doesn't make it wrong, just, "less-preferred" than one that doesn't have this flaw.
"Want a new theory? Come up with one that can be tested. If you can't do that, don't waste our time."
Been there, done that...
http://www.geocities.com/naturescience/AnthropicBias.html
http://www.geocities.com/naturescience/NaturalDesign.html
http://www.geocities.com/naturescience/The-1thLaw.html
Less correct equals more incorrect, or am I mistaken? Yes, I agree that if you define "correct" as "only PERFECTLY correct" than all scientific theories could be deemed incorrect, because they are mere approximations. That's really not relevant unless you're particularly attached to a certain theory and don't like to see it go away. Science is a neverending process; a constant refinement of understanding. Theories are just milestones along the way.
Nice pseudoscience web pages, but I've seen less amateurish efforts elsewhere. In particular, I'm impressed by the efforts of the people behind some of the more convoluted "earth is the center of the universe" theories, such as the hollow-earth theory, etc. These theories have light travelling in arcs, new rules of gravity, all kinds of stuff throwing Occam's Razor to the wind to come up with an alternative explanation of how the world works. Sure, they're complete crackpots, but they're industrious little crackpots. Those sites you reference look more like the work of a single person who confuses science with the healing power of crystals. (I can see it continuing with: "You must change your base assumptions that there is nothing until you prove it. It is more natural to assume that OM exists until you prove it does not. OMMMMMM!")
Yes, you are mistaken. Less accurate is not wrong.
And FYI... since you obviously don't have the ability to recognize real science for yourself... the group that I posted these to does not allow unsubstantiated speculation, and every post is reviewed by a real physicist from places like, CalTec, and MIT prior to approval. Those people, (unlike yourself), can tell the difference between pseudo and real science:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056466.html
http://olympus.het.brown.edu/pipermail/spr/Week-of-Mon-20030818/012478.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2004-04/msg0060276.html
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl4141424102d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-...
So... you either don't know what you are talking about... OR, more likely, you are just fanatically and willfully ignorant
Whoops, looks like you were showing off your own work instead of pointing me to a funny site.
Didn't realize I'd offend you. Sure, if less than correct can still be correct, then I'm sure your nice theories are perfectly correct by that definition.
Have fun with your little group. Let me know if anyone takes you seriously, other than university professors working well outside their respective areas of expertise.
Maybe you can redefine matters so that in physics, less correct theories are more correct. Because a law professor at Cornell says so and Cornell is a reputable school even if the guy isn't a physicist.
So, we've resorted to lies and misinformation...
Figures... I'm guessing... "Chosionist"
...and I'm guessing "hollow Earth". Let me know when the lizardmen come for us.
I really don't care why you don't like Evolution. What's disturbing is that there don't seem to be any steps in your world between hypothesis and theory. As if all scientists have to do is sit around and come up with ideas until they land on the correct one. Theories are meant to be analyzed, tested, peer-reviewed, and revised. Lack of this process is what separates science from Internet ramblings. Theories are designed to be attacked, tested, and modified.
Be sure to send me your journal articles when you get published. Yes, journals can and do cling to old theories and have biases against new interesting theories. But the great thing about those cases is that eventually the rejected theories were vindicated by overwhelming scientific support and eventually published. I'm sure you're just waiting for that to happen. Have a nice wait.
Nice post! ;-)
Yes, I've got a theory and would like your comments. See attachement
Where can I observe evolution happening right now? Can anyone tell me where I can find this.
david
It happens right now in the process of bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics currently in use.
It happens right now in the constant development and change of the many viruses that cause what we call a cold.
Fritz
When I start the demo, I see three balls slowly moving around and through the one big ball in the middle, then they get closer and closer to the big ball and after that, they seem to get punched away by the big ball, harder and harder but always returning to the big ball, after some time I don't see them anymore at all, but that might also have to do something with the speed that they have around that time. can anybody explain what it is that I see?
... ah, yes, interesting question. [did you have a look at the documentation?]
First, what you see: the demo is for testing the internal system. Currently this includes delivery of influences from various elements to their destination through the world engine (GWE) and the agents system itself. That means, agents are running and actually doing something AND responding to influences. Currently those three balls all have an attract agent and a move agent. The attract agent responds to influences by increasing the speed _towards_ the source of the influence and the move agent actually performs the movement with the speed.
... did you have a look at the README file by the way? I think most of this is explained there (and the referenced files).
The second thing: the balls get "punched away" ... you probably found a bug in one of the agents... [yes, I noticed this too from time to time, but this release really wasn't intended to be "perfect"]
I've attached a movie to this post with the "bug", Enjoy!
>The realism is not so much of physical reality but more of a realistic human - and especially life as a whole - evolution.
Jeez, arn't those two fundamentally connected?
connected yes, but just think about this:
if you hold something in your hand and you let it go, it falls down on the floor - that's what I mean with "physical" law.
... now take your attention to yourself, to your thinking or your feelings... think about your social "connections"... are these things that are covered by the same "physical" laws? (note that it "could" be possible that on some level these laws are the same anyway, but in an abstracted form so these laws are just specialisations.)
But I completely understand your reaction to this statement ;)
Use something like avida
http://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/
It already has a Qt visualizer BTW...
./configure --enable-qt-viewer --enable-standard-prefix
make
make install
installs in the unpacked directory structure (for me atleast)
qt-viewer "has to"(?) be copied from work directory to bin
or maybe it can be run from the work directory...
After this you will only need to modify the parameters/goals for
the simulated environment to match our universe...
- then you will only have to wait and see :-)
This sound like the software called framestick (for winDOZE) which I was "playing" with a few years ago.
Does anyone what happend to the software? I cant locate it anymore :(
Regards
John
A Crash Course in Irreducible Complexity
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
--Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
With this statement, Charles Darwin provided a criterion by which his theory of evolution could be falsified. The logic was simple: since evolution is a gradual process in which slight modifications produce advantages for survival, it cannot produce complex structures in a short amount of time. It's a step-by-step process which may gradually build up and modify complex structures, but it cannot produce them suddenly.
Darwin, meet Michael Behe, biochemical researcher and professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Michale Behe claims to have shown exactly what Darwin claimed would destroy the theory of evolution, through a concept he calls "irreducible complexity." In simple terms, this idea applies to any system of interacting parts in which the removal of any one part destroys the function of the entire system. An irreducibly complex system, then, requires each and every component to be in place before it will function.
As a simple example of irreducible complexity, Behe presents the humble mousetrap.
Shown above is a modified sketch of Behe's mousetrap as taken from
http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/mousetrap.htm.
It contains 5 interdependent parts which allow it to catch mice: the wooden platform, the spring, the hammer (the bar which crushes the mouse against the wooden base), the holding bar, and a catch. Each of these components is absolutely essential for the function of the mousetrap. For instance, if you remove the catch, you cannot set the trap and it will never catch mice, no matter how long they may dance over the contraption. Remove the spring, and the hammer will flop uselessly back and forth-certainly not much of a threat to the little rodents. Of course, removal of the holding bar will ensure that the trap never catches anything because there will again be no way to arm the system.
Now, note what this implies: an irreducibly complex system cannot come about in a gradual manner. One cannot begin with a wooden platform and catch a few mice, then add a spring, catching a few more mice than before, etc. No, all the components must be in place before it functions at all. A step-by-step approach to constructing such a system will result in a useless system until all the components have been added. The system requires all the components to be added at the same time, in the right configuration, before it works at all.
How does irreducible complexity apply to biology? Behe notes that early this century, before biologists really understood the cell, they had a very simplistic model of its inner workings. Without the electron microscopes and other advanced techniques that now allow scientists to peer into the inner workings of the cell, it was assumed that the cells was a fairly simple blob of protoplasm. The living cell was a "black box"-something that could be observed to perform various functions while its inner workings were unknown and mysterious. Therefore, it was easy, and justifiable, to assume that the cell was a simple collection of molecules. But not anymore. Technological advances have provided detailed information about the inner workings of the cell. Michael Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, states "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10^-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." In a word, the cell is complicated. Very complicated.
In fact, Michael Behe asserts that the complicated biological structures in a cell exhibit the exact same irreducible complexity that we saw in the mousetrap example. In other words, they are all-or-nothing: either everything is there and it works, or something is missing and it doesn't work. As we saw before, such a system cannot be constructed in a gradual manner-it simply won't work until all the components are present, and Darwinism has no mechanism for adding all the components at once. Remember, Darwin's mechanism is one of gradual mutations leading to improved fitness and survival. A less-than-complete system of this nature simply will not function, and it certainly won't help the organism to survive. Indeed, having a half-formed and hence non-functional system would actually hinder survival and would be selected against.
But Behe is not the only scientist to recognize irreducible complexity in nature. In 1986, Michael J. Katz, in his Templets and the explanation of complex patterns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) writes:
"In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but the final patterns that they produce are so heterogeneous that they cannot effectively be reduced to smaller or less intricate predecessor components. As I will argue ... these patterns are, in a fundamental sense, irreducibly complex..."
Katz continues that this sort of complexity is found in biology:
"Cells and organisms are quite complex by all pattern criteria. They are built of heterogeneous elements arranged in heterogeneous configurations, and they do not self-assemble. One cannot stir together the parts of a cell or of an organism and spontaneously assemble a neuron or a walrus: to create a cell or an organisms one needs a preexisting cell or a preexisting organism, with its attendant complex templets. A fundamental characteristic of the biological realm is that organisms are complex patterns, and, for its creation, life requires extensive, and essentially maximal, templets."
Behe presents several examples of irreducibly complex systems to prove his point, but I'll just focus on one: the cilium. Cilia are hair-like structures, which are used by animals and plants to move fluid over various surfaces (for example, cilia in your respiratory tree sweep mucous towards the throat and thus promote elimination of contaminants) and by single-celled organisms to move through water. Cilia are like "oars" which contain their own mechanism for bending. That mechanism involves tiny rod-like structures called microtubules that are arranged in a ring. Adjacent microtubules are connected to each other by two types of "bridges"-a flexible linker bridge and an arm that can "walk" up the neighboring microtubule. The cilia bends by activating the "walker" arms, and the sliding motion that this tends to generate is converted to a bending motion by the flexible linker bridges.
Thus, the cilium has several essential components: stiff microtubules, linker bridges, and the "motors" in the form of walker arms. While my description is greatly simplified (Behe notes that over 200 separate proteins have been identified in this particular system), these 3 components form the basic system, and show what is required for functionality. For without one of these components, the system simply will not function. We can't evolve a cilium by starting with microtubules alone, because the microtubules will be fixed and rigid-not much good for moving around. Adding the flexible linker bridges to the system will not do any good either-there is still no motor and the cilia still will not bend. If we have microtubules and the walker arms (the motors) but no flexible linker arms, the microtubules will keep on sliding past each other till they float away from each other and are lost.
This is only one of many biochemical systems that Behe discusses in his book, Darwin's Black Box. Other examples of irreducible complexity include the light-sensing system in animal eyes, the transport system within the cell, the bacterial flagellum, and the blood clotting system. All consist of a very complex system of interacting parts which cannot be simplified while maintaining functionality.
Evolution simply cannot produce complex structures in a single generation as would be required for the formation of irreducibly complex systems. To imagine that a chance set of mutations would produce all 200 proteins required for cilia function in a single generation stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. And yet, producing one or a few of these proteins at a time, in standard Darwinian fashion, would convey no survival advantage because those few proteins would have no function-indeed, they would constitute a waste of energy for the cell to even produce. Darwin recognized this as a potent threat to his theory of evolution-the issue that could completely disprove his idea. So the question must be raised: Has Darwin's theory of evolution "absolutely broken down?" According to Michael Behe, the answer is a resounding "yes."
http://acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/irredcomplex.htm
Googling I found several good reviews of the Behe book, to put forward one: American Scientist lists six fallacies of book:
1: There is a boundary between the molecular world and other levels of biological organization.
2: The current utility of a given feature (molecular or otherwise) explains "why" the feature originally evolved.
3: Unless we can identify advantages for each imaginary gradual step leading to a contemporary bit of biochemistry, we cannot invoke a Darwinian explanation.
4: Molecular evolution: "a lot of sequences, some math, and no answers."
5: There is a conspiracy of silence among scientists concerning the failure of Darwinian explanation
6: The evolution of complexity is unaddressed and unexplained.
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/22794
I suggest that further discussion on evolution are moved to a more suitable forum like talk.origins on news. http://www.talkorigins.org/
That is a great book own it read it and its on the book shelf. I would like to pont you to another book called the finger print of God by Hugh Ross.
behe, what a waste of bandwidth. How many people here are talking about the software in question?
Darwin's theory of Evolution is NOT Evolution itself. It is outdated and has already been disproved, though not thoroughly. The idea still lives on and is in fact well accepted and will not be disproved.
The ciliary system took 2 billion years to evolve, and it has been conserved today, simply because this design works best. Todays system is finetuned in 2 (or more correctly perhaps 1.6) billion years (ciliates evolved in the earliest life forms, which themselves appeared after a long period of "molecular evolution"). This is through trial and error at the molecular level, where events are much faster.
Bacteria such as E. Coli have a 20 min doubling period and molecules change way faster. A colony of bacteria can acquire resistance to an antibiotic in a short time, starting from a single cell which has the right mutation. And these bacteria have cilia. The mosquito in your living room has survived nearly every insecticide you throw at it (I mean the population, not the individual). Even your own immune system can produce novel antibodies by molecular jugglery whenever a new pathogen attacks you. Evolution occurs at every fraction of a second in your body. If it didn't, you shouldn't be living and trolling on this site.
The cumulative effect of molecular evolution is seen as evolution of a species. This approximates, but is not the same as Darwin's theory. The larger the animal, the slower is the cumulative molecular evolution on it (i.e. without recombination or sexual reproduction).
Try putting your complex system together in even a 100 years, and the non-evolutionist theories go in the deluge. You are hitting the hatchet on your own head. The so called 'irreducible complexity' is proof for the theory of Evolution, not any other 'creationist' theory. The complexity cannot be reduced in a short time (but it can be reduced in a much longer time).
It seems to me that 'God' is used as a nice tool to attribute everything to that our incompetent little brains cannot decipher. Accept the fact that our brains are incompetent and try to solve the problem rather than sit lazily and attribute it to a 'God'.
I came to this article just out of curiosity. Is there a molecular visualizer available for kde (and I mean for kde, not rasmol/vmd/jmol etc)? I am a bioinformatics student, who is still learning programming and would like to try.
That certianly is the party line and its what you'll be feed in a college bio class but the effidence does not support that. In fact the effidence points to life "apperaring" right after the late bombardant. Thats at the very earlist sustainable moment. There was no millions of years required for it to evolve.
I think you should watch what you say, because this God stuff has offended me! Iagree with the other person and it has not been proven. I just don't think that we used to be stupid monkeys! Beat that loser!
What do you mean, used to? You are living proof of constant evolution, if only by being overdue for it.
Large scale change of one type of organism into another, so-called "macro-evolution", is beyond the ability of mutation coupled with natural selection to produce. Evolutionists acknowledge this is a "research issue". Even non-creation scientists (such as Denton and Behe) have written books giving the hard scientific facts that document why this is impossible.
Evolution happens, it's a fact, this software provides a simulation for it, this has nothing to do with your religious beliefs.
Oh boy, I'm going to stay out of this one.
'READ' the following title: UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN BY MARK PAREHK