Take the Design Challenge!

... the fitness function ... is well-defined and readily supplies the complex specified information that an optimal crooked wire genetic antenna [or any other problem solved with Genetic Algorithms] seems to acquire for free

Dave: Did you try posting this challenge at UD? Or are you banned? In any case, I'm looking forward to their "designs". Any plans to post the ID solutions (if any) somewhere? Love the challenge, by the way.

I sent my answer to Dave an hour ago.

Can't they just figure it out with soap bubbles? Assuming they can remember the way to the lab, of course.

Seems that Salvador is obfuscating on Uncommon Descent as usual. What a hoot. I wonder what the people at Cornell's IDEA club have to say about Sal's response.

And people still wonder why scientists consider ID to be scientifically vacuous. One merely has to point to Sal to see an excellent example of why ID is doomed scientifically speaking.

Thanks Dave, you have done a marvelous job at exposing not only ID but also some of the more vocal ID evangelists

It's strange: it's almost as if critics of GA's are being intentionaly deceitful. I went to the UD page linked under trackbacks below, and the criticism of the orginal fortran code was, get this, that it had a fitness function. See, since this fitness function didn't "evolve" the whole thing is a charade.

*does a double take*

The whole purpose of this sort of an algorithm is to create an artifical microcosm within which a simulation of something natural can occur. There has been no claims made that the environment, the simulation itself, is naturally occurring. It is that which is simulated that is done using mechanisms that are analogous to the natural world. The simulation is OBVIOUSLY artificial. But the processes, the mechanisms coded as algorithms are analogous to natural mechanisms. That's the whole point.

With this sort of attitude, scientists cannot perform ANY laboratory experiments where they set up initial conditions that are intended to mimick something in nature.

So, for instance, if I create an environment of self reproducing organisms, and put those organisms under a selection pressure, and I can see how the mechanisms of random variation and differential reproductive success cause that population to change its character, these people would respond that since I wrote all the code, (or in a laboratory experiment, set up the starting conditions) the simulation (or experiment) is a charade. Nevermind the fact that the resulting organisms within the simulation, which were arrived at using processes analogous to those found in nature, were never coded into the software. Because the environment is artificial it doesn't show anything.

I'm flabbergasted.

Is it dishonesty, or is somebody just not getting it?

O dear sal. The front loading is the fitness function. Gotcha. Let me suggest the 'universal fitness funtion' - the fall.

where is the front loading here:

http://news.com.com/Is+evolution+predictable/2100-11395_3-6074543.html

??

Is it dishonesty, or is somebody just not getting it?

Ondoher wrote on August 15, 2006 at 12:58 AM: ...these people would respond that since I wrote all the code, (or in a laboratory experiment, set up the starting conditions) the simulation (or experiment) is a charade.

Is it dishonesty, or is somebody just not getting it?

Most of the software engineers here at UD saw right through it

SteveS calls them information cooties. Put a human being anywhere on the same continent as the experiment and it is infected with them.

UD must have a few recalcitrant software developers on it's site.

Shortly before DaveScot confers a little retribution for this act, PZ pleads, "Don't be mad Dave, you were not the target of my gun. Honest, I was aiming at the shirt you happen to be wearing, not at you specifically, only your shirt."

Maybe it is a mistake to mention the Steiner solution. This might give the impression that the success of the programme is in how close it gets to the Steiner solution and that this is some kind of target. (I know Dave didn't say that - but people can get the wrong idea). The real success is how the programme can generate novel solutions that give the appearance of being designed to have a short total network length even though the specific design was not in any way incorporated in the algorithm (and indeed was not known to the programme writer).

Salvador tries to draw an analogy with finding the sum of the first 1000 integers. This is the equivalent to finding the Steiner solution. We may not know the answer in the sense of being able to say what the number is, but it is unique and clearly defined and could be intepreted as a target. A better analogy might be a programme that generates numbers that are in some sense better than others without there being a best number. I can't think of an example without giving the numbers some physical meaning as Dave has done - but maybe a mathematician can?

Looks like ID proponents are confused about whether the fitness function defines fitness De Re or De Dicto.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop-attitude-reports/dere.html

ie, the fitness function looks for the shortest solution, the Steiner solution is the shortest solution, therefore the fitness function looks for the Steiner solution.

'The shortest solution' seems to be referentially opaque here. Compare to: I'm looking for the tallest man in the room (true), John is the tallest man (true), therefore I'm looking for John (false; never heard of the guy).

Wow, I finally used my philosophy degree for something. :)

Right, have sent in my solution. Everyone else: get cracking :)

The only real criticism I can imagine is that the program was written in C++ and not Java.

I do prefer C++ myself, but there's still a case for Java.

The shortest solution' seems to be referentially opaque here. Compare to: I'm looking for the tallest man in the room (true), John is the tallest man (true), therefore I'm looking for John (false; never heard of the guy).

At the moment I'm the one doing some "seeing through," and I'm seeing through Salvadore Cordova's claim of "seeing through." What he apparently doesn't comprehend is that specifying parameters that dictate conditions for success is NOT the same thing as specifying a target. For example, specifying a "strength of gravity" in a computer simulation is not the specification of a target even while it constrains the solutions. Whether by lack of comprehension or by intention, the IDists misrepresent matters by engaging in equivocation. As usual.

Nice experiment, Dave.

What's your prediction?

To find a solution, one could try the software at:

http://www.diku.dk/geosteiner/

Salvador

Salvador wrote To find a solution, one could try the software at:

Comment #119718 Posted by Salvador T. Cordova on August 15, 2006 08:59 AM (e) To find a solution, one could try the software at: http://www.diku.dk/geosteiner/ Salvador

Teacher: So, what is the length of the Hypotenuse? Salvador: To find a solution, one could read the book at Amazon.com

IDers are bending over backwards to deny that genetic algorithms can actually create something. It's actually a really dumb argument that they're using. Essentially what they're saying is that if my boss comes to me and says, "design a flying car that gets 100 MPG" and I turn around and actually do it, that I haven't done any actual work. According to them, all the design was done by my boss when he defined what he wanted: "a flying car that gets 100 MPG". What a joke.

— Brit

"Is it dishonesty, or is somebody just not getting it?"

They aren't getting it. It's called ideology-induced blindness. Religious fundamentalists are incapable of grasping evolutionary concepts for the same reason that doctrinaire Soviet Marxists were incapable of grasping certain concepts from economics and statistics. A suitably dogmatic mind will actually prevent itself from making connections that could threaten a cherished dogma.

If you discuss with such people, you can actually see this taking place. You will debate, and they will follow... up until you point out something that is a) obvious and b) contradicts their dogma. At this point, a "lock up" occurs. Their mind simply refuses to perform the required connection, induction, integration, etc. They simply will not allow A to be A. It's quite astounding to witness. I have experienced it with all sorts of dogmatic people, not just fundamentalist Christians.

I've sent in my solutions.

SteveS calls them information cooties. Put a human being anywhere on the same continent as the experiment and it is infected with them. Paul

I think it is pretty pathetic that Salvador's response is partially "It's written in archaic Fortran, so its hard to solve."

But the most important thing in hitting such a target of opportunity is that by intelligently designing the right strategy, one can hit a target of opportunity without the target being explicitly described.

I think the problem is that, when you have a well-posed deterministic problem (impying a unique solution), Dembski and his followers actually don't believe that there is any susbtantive, or perhaps even any genuine conceptual, distinction between the problem statement and the solution. Its a twist on the classic conceptual problem some people have with the possibility of physical determinism. Presuming a strong form of ontological reductionism, many people think that if any reasonably high degree of micro-level physical determinism is present in some system, all apparent macro-level supervening entities, attributes and/or processes are mere illusions or, in old-fashioned terms, they deny the existence of "secondary" causes or attributes. This is a highly questionable and philosphically debateable position. However, that really opens a can of worms that aren't at all relevant here.

I think the clearest way to address this objection would be to just show that genetic algorithms can find locally optimal solutions to problems that do not necessarily have a unique solution, or it is unknown or unprovable if they exist. There are a number such problems which are quite well-known, such as the general Travelling Salesman Problem, which don't always or in general have a unique minimum (or provable unique minimum) to their energy or "fitness" landscape. The fact that multiple runs of the genetic algorithms will generally give a range of different local solutions instead of just one (as long as they are verifiably local optima), should just strengthen the analogy with biological evolution since this is what happens in nature and it would demonstrate the role of chance in generating diversity.

Some people might object that this is too easy and this kind of thing is already done all the time. And, for the most part, they'd be right. But pointing out that this kind of non-deterministic approach to problems that are ill-defined or otherwise have no provable or apriori knowable unique soltion clearly shows that this ID objection is a non sequitur. This is so because it specifically does not apply to the natural world of biology as we know it. There is no apparent reason to suppose that the particular well-adapted forms that we see today are anything but contingent - contingent upon the particular history of life on this planet, from starting initial conditions through all the physical changes of the planet, including catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts. They could surely have been other than they are and still be locally optimal adaptations (on multi-generational but generally finite time-scales).

This objection of Dembski's would only have force if one presupposes, as I suspect he does, that the biological forms found in nature are the only way the world could have been from a design standpoint - that the entire world we see is somehow an aprior necessity determined by some cosmological conception of apriori divine logic or a Leibnizian conception of the divine will or something like that. But then the argument is clearly circular, unless he postulates some apriori logical necessity, which would negate the inference of intelligent design. Dembski simply cannot avoid begging the question in his attempts to catagorically dismiss the possible roles of chance and contingency in shaping biology, because he accepts that biological processes are also physical processes.

But, hey, the more they can deny evolution, the better they feel about ID's evangelical potential to bring people to Jesus Christ. They have an incentive to not understand the relevant material. How are you supposed to teach someone like that?

"Dembski and his followers actually don't believe that there is any susbtantive, or perhaps even any genuine conceptual, distinction between the problem statement and the solution."

I'm an engineer, and all I have to say is "I wish!"

There was an attempt to do something back in the 80s called "inferential programming" that was based on at least a weak version of this idea. The idea was that you could specify the problem in a certain way and then the computer would be able to logically deduce a solution using certain rules of logic. If my knowledge of CS history is correct, this resulted in languages like PROLOG. This project was, by most accounts, a failure-- if you try to program in any of these "inferential" languages, you quickly discover that what you're really doing is just conventional programming in a very odd roundabout way. You have to actually specify the solution to get the computer to "infer" the solution.

For example, here is a quicksort in PROLOG:
http://www.w3courses.com/code/prolog/quicksort.txt

This is clearly not just a problem statement-- it is the solution. It's a quicksort algorithm in PROLOG. Nothing of any substance is "inferred."

These attempts failed because a problem specification does not contain all of the inforamtion necessary to generate the solution.

These approaches were not evolutionary. They relied on strict logic. If they had worked, we would probably have "HAL 9000" and lots of other things predicted by classical AI in the 70s/80s. We don't because they didn't work.

Fast forward to today...

Evolution appears to be different. Using evolutionary computation it *is* possible to specify the problem in the form of a fitness/reward function and then have the computer evolve a solution that is larger, more complex, and different from the problem specification. Evolution can do this because evolution creates information-- the solution contains more information than the problem.

I could, for example, train an evolutionary computation system to generate code to sort a list by simply specifying that I want the list sorted. If I also include speed as an evaluation criteria, evolution might generate something like a quicksort or maybe something entirely different but nevertheless efficient. John Koza's books on genetic programming are full of examples like this, some of which are considerably more impressive than sorting.

I have even seen artificial life systems generate populations containing many times more information (as measured by compressibility) than the size of the original uncompressed C source code of the simulator.

"Objection! Overruled. But! But! This is devastating to my case!"

Mike Wrote... Dembski and his followers actually don't believe that there is any susbtantive, or perhaps even any genuine conceptual, distinction between the problem statement and the solution.

These attempts failed because a problem specification does not contain all of the inforamtion necessary to generate the solution.

Indeed. The problem is that Dembski looks at a gazelle and thinks the task at hand for evolution was "build a fast gazelle". Of course, the real problem was the much more generic "don't get eaten by the lions", which has many equally valid solutions (be big, hide underground, take to the trees, etc.), many of which evolution obligingly also explores.

— stevearoni

Disagree here. In theory, once you can logically specify your problem, you can run an automated theorem prover to generate an intuitionistic (i.e. constructive) proof. Next, you can turn the proof into a computer program which will "realize" your problem for you. I've seen this work. You just run into undecidability and intractability issues (very quickly).

— GuyeFaux

PZ Myers finds DaveScot in the park one day, walks up with a paint ball gun and shoots DaveScot in the chest. Ouch!

Does this story end with DaveScot apologising for all the trouble he caused PZ? :)

I think the clearest way to address this objection would be to just show that genetic algorithms can find locally optimal solutions to problems that do not necessarily have a unique solution, or it is unknown or unprovable if they exist.

— Mike Rogers

Nature doesn't search for optimal solutions, anyway. It just allows sufficient ones to propagate. Stevaroni's "don't get eaten" as opposed to "make a fast gazelle" is a perfect example.

Hey Sal, I have a few questions for you to answer.

Are you game?

Coward.

I'm assuming that you all read "Chaos" (Gleick)

Maybe that combined with Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson

for some background info would help.

I'm not an engineer in any way but tell me if i'm wrong: Are the id types essentially refuting fractal geometry by saying that simple inputs can't generate complicated outputs? Or maybe more that a system of trial and error that rewards incremental improvements is not representative of our environment?

I still don't understand whether Sal knows how lousy his arguments are, or whether he really believes them.

No, sorry, designing the simulation itself is not sneaking in intelligent design. No sorry, mutating the simulation itself is not the same thing as genetic mutation to the things IN the simulation. How many times can he make variations on these same lousy arguments and pretend he's explaining something new or insightful?

His problem is that laypeople can grasp these things pretty darn well. The environment exists. It has various features. Populations of reproducing elements exist with heredity. They have wide variations. Put the two together, and the population is going to end up containing information about the environment imprinted onto it by virtue of what gets selected out. Furthermore, the exact particulars of the solutions aren't going to be controlled or directed by the environment, because it isn't the environmental features themselves that created them. The picture isn't that complicated. That information gets added to the population is obvious. You can complain that maybe this information already existed in the environment, but in that case you are just equivocating by defining information to mean something different than what we were looking for in the first place. And under that second definition, he still loses, because the novel forms that emerge aren't specified in the environment at all, and so are again quite easy to see an increase in the information content (it's just that no longer are we talking about information about something, as we were before, but now information about how we can go about acheiving a particular something).

What's left for him to say in the face of that? Nothing. So it's long diatribes about how there are so many engineers on his side, yadda yadda yadda.

I still don't understand whether Sal knows how lousy his arguments are, or whether he really believes them.

Sal is like a firehose of idiocy. I don't think he's lying, I think he's totally nuts.

Read the comments here

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1316#comments

including the jaw-dropping comment number 44

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1316#comment-53742

I don't see in him the brains required to be duplicitous. I think when religion kicks in, his brains just go right out the window.

I still don't understand whether Sal knows how lousy his arguments are, or whether he really believes them.

With this sort of attitude, scientists cannot perform ANY laboratory experiments where they set up initial conditions that are intended to mimick something in nature.

— Ondoher

Send my one in too.... :-)

BTW, I suggest that all solutions are given, willbe nice to see what various people thought.....

You, in contrast, are an intelligent agent, and should be able to 'whup it easily.

Posted by steve s on August 15, 2006 07:24 PM (e) Sal is like a firehose of idiocy. I don't think he's lying, I think he's totally nuts. Read the comments here http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive... including the jaw-dropping comment number 44 http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive... I don't see in him the brains required to be duplicitous. I think when religion kicks in, his brains just go right out the window.

Apparently the kids can distinguish between creationism and ID, and its important that pollsters are at least attempting to make the distinction. My only reservation is that it really is not an either or situation, but at this stage I am not going to complain.

Thus, he[Sal] actually does equate ID and creationism.

Evolution can do this because evolution creates information--- the solution contains more information than the problem.

— Adam lerymenko

Salvador is trying to claim that "the solution is already implicitly defined in the statement of the problem" is a misrepresentation of ID views, and that no ID advocate he knows says that. Yet the quote just previous from Dembski's NFL seems to be best read that way: "... the fitness function ... is well-defined and readily supplies the complex specified information that an optimal crooked wire genetic antenna [or any other problem solved with Genetic Algorithms] seems to acquire for free,"

The "CSI acquired" would be that of the specific solution, and its putative source would be the evaluation function, which is a programmatic statement of the problem to be solved. Certainly this was Dembski's position given Dawkins's "weasel" program, since its evaluation function actually did contain the "distant ideal target". And, from the passage specified by the quote above, it remains Dembski's position for other instances of evolutionary computation. So I think Dave's statement is an unremarkable and straightforward presentation of the stance taken by a major ID advocate.

Curse the internet for thoroughly documenting Creationist doublethink and ignorance!

I think the problem is that, when you have a well-posed deterministic problem (impying a unique solution), Dembski and his followers actually don't believe that there is any susbtantive, or perhaps even any genuine conceptual, distinction between the problem statement and the solution.

It's called ideology-induced blindness...A suitably dogmatic mind will actually prevent itself from making connections that could threaten a cherished dogma.

Steevl: That's certainly an interesting way to look at it. (And congratulations on your degree use!) But it seems to me that the IDer claim that "humans were necessary to set things up" as it stands is simply a begging of the question. If they were honest, the IDer would tell us what precisely the human does that "corrupts" the situation.

Mike Rogers: It might be stronger than that - a narrow, logicist view of mathematics makes all mathematics into tautological consequences of the axioms, so this would make all GA solutions of problems of the sort you mention "already contained in the conditions". Of course, this view proves too much - it not only shoots down GAs, but all of the uses of math in factual fields whatsoever! Oops. But we are talking about unreasoanable people, so who knows ...

GuyeFaux: "You just run into undecidability and intractability issues" - gee, is that all? :)

But, hey, the more they can deny evolution, the better they feel about ID's evangelical potential to bring people to Jesus Christ. They have an incentive to not understand the relevant material. How are you supposed to teach someone like that?

— steve s

If anyone doubts this, read this thread: http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive...

I'm giving Intelligent Design proponents (and everyone else!) a chance to actually Design something!

— Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas wrote: ID advocates, since y'all are saying that the solution is already implicitly defined in the statement of the problem

To find a solution, one could try the software at: http://www.diku.dk/geosteiner/ Salvador

— Salvador

Comment #119993 Posted by Salvador T. Cordova on August 16, 2006 10:33 AM (e) Dave Thomas wrote: ID advocates, since y'all are saying that the solution is already implicitly defined in the statement of the problem

these programs only succeed by the illicit expedient of providing the computer with a "target sequence" and then treating relatively greater proximity to future function (i.e., the target sequence), not actual present function, as a selection criterion. As Berlinski (2000) has argued, genetic algorithms need something akin to a "forward looking memory" in order to succeed. Yet such foresighted selection has no analogue in nature.

What's more, evolutionary algorithms find their way through all the various zigzagging tangles---most of which don't work---to one that actually does. This is remarkable. Even so, the fitness function that prescribes optimal antenna performance is well-defined and readily supplies the complex specified information that an optimal crooked wire genetic antenna seems to acquire for free.

I had an email exchange with Thomas (personal communication), and I pointed out that the program created no real novelty and no information besides the information originally contained within the fitness function itself. My logic was as follows: the desired solution has (1) all five points connected, and (2) the shortest path-length. The program selected for networks that (1) connect all five points, and (2) have shortest path-lengths. It is no wonder that the program converges regularly upon short, optimum networks; it has been told precisely what to do by explicit instruction in the fitness function.

The point is, what you said in your opening post does not accurately represent what I or other IDers believe.

— Salvador

secondclass:
I think Sal is saying that the CSI is not exclusively "hidden" in the fitness function. He's saying that CSI is "hidden" in the choice of the pair (problem, fitness function). A devious ID verifies which problems can be solved by using an evolutionary algorithm with an "innocent" looking fitness function, and then produces the results as evidence on how generic tools random mutation and cumulative selection are.

Of course, even the above position would admit that there exists CSI which can be produced by non-intelligence. Let me guess. The argument continues: this CSI, however, can only be procuded in the world of math and computation, instead of the natural world free of human manipulation, and it can only be detected by ID? However, even this strange postition would require IDers to retreat from the claim: "CSI can only be produced by ID".)

Evolution, I'm given to understand, has no goal.

Comment #119985 Posted by Michael Suttkus, II on August 16, 2006 09:29 AM (e) No, no no! Intelligent Design is not a theory of intelligence or design! It's a theory of design DETECTION! See, if you make a solution, they will scan it and see if it is intelligent with their classic and undeniable, "Yes/Maybe Yes" test of power! They don't design anything. Only intelligences can design things. If they could design something, don't you think they would have designed a scientific theory by now?

The "Doctrine of Signatures" has been an idea of herbalists for centuries, but it did not become part of the medical thinking until the middle of the seventeenth century. In simple terms, the "Doctrine of Signatures" is the idea that God has marked everything He created with a sign (signature). The sign was an indication of the purpose for the creation of the item. The "Doctrine of Signatures" was popularized in the early 1600s by the writings of Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), a master shoemaker in the small town of Görlitz, Germany. At the age of 25, Böhme had a profound mystical vision in which he saw the relationship between God and man. As a result of the vision, he wrote "Signatura Rerum; The Signature of all Things". His book espoused a spiritual philosophy; however it soon was adopted for its medical application. The Doctrine states that, by observation, one can determine from the color of the flowers or roots, the shape of the leaves, the place of growing, or other signatures, what the plant's purpose was in God's plan. A good example would be Hepatica acutiloba, a perennial wildflower that is common in the eastern U.S. Hepatica has a three-lobed leaf that supposedly bears a resemblance to the liver. Because of this, herbalist believed the plant to be effective in treating liver ailments. Even though the "Doctrine of Signatures" was a product of medieval alchemists and herbalists, a similar belief was held by Native Americans and Oriental cultures. Today you can still find a similar belief among old-timers in the Appalachian region.

Tell you the truth, the whole "detection thing" reminds me of the Doctrine of Signatures:

— Moses

(I must be a total idiot. I'm already embroiled in fights on vaccine denial and "organic" food on other threads, and here I am ticking off the homeopaths.)

I think Sal is saying that the CSI is not exclusively "hidden" in the fitness function. He's saying that CSI is "hidden" in the choice of the pair (problem, fitness function).

— caligula

caligula:

"But I personally think that evolution does *additionally* create brand new information, actually new conceptual layers where new kind of complexity can be measured. The most obvious example is the evolution of multi-cellular life."

I'm not so confident discussing information without a tangible definition. KC IT defines how much there is, Shannon IT how it is transmitted, and Maxwell's demons how it relates to entropy and memory. That doesn't help here.

Nevertheless, I think you should also add two earlier sources here. "other DNA carriers in the ecosystem" (coevolution between species) and "the other genes of the same genome" (coevolution between genes) are probably part of your conceptual layers too. At least they are qualitatively different in the sense that coevolution apparently break NFL theorems.

"Does this stuff cure cancer? is it gone?"

At some point, mankind will cure cancer. Please note that I've done the front-loaded, CSI-laden hard part above. So when they're handing out those nobel prizes, I *FULLY EXPECT* to be top of the list.

If that's Sal's position, then he has some 'splaining to do. According to Dembski, Thomas's program must contain at least as much CSI as the solution. But his program doesn't contain a problem statement, so it would seem that the CSI must reside exclusively in the fitness function.

— secondclass

The doctrine in it's Chinese form is a major reason rhinoceros continue to be poached. The big phallic horn on their nose is "proof" that they are a cure for impotence, so Chinese herbalists pay big for rhino horn and another animal dies from human ignorance.

I wondered:

The IDers still call back to Steiner solution, which can be found even without genetic algorithms (although hardly by their own power). How about trying the experiment in some way that would DISQUALIFY Steiner solution? For example, imagine putting a line segment somewhere within the picture, and specifying that no line of the solution can cross that segment. What is known about this modified problem?

Then, you can put the segment in such a way that it would completely eliminate Steiner solution from the list of possibilities, and THEN let them try to come up with a good solution :)

I wondered:

The IDers still call back to Steiner solution, which can be found even without genetic algorithms (although hardly by their own power). How about trying the experiment in some way that would DISQUALIFY Steiner solution? For example, imagine putting a line segment somewhere within the picture, and specifying that no line of the solution can cross that segment.

If you imagine the problem as finding, say, shortest set of straight roads connecting cities, this is an obvious generalization - what if there is a fence you can't cross or some part of terrain where you just can't build the road over? What if there is a lake?

What is known about this modified problem?

Then, you can put the segment in such a way that it would completely eliminate Steiner solution from the list of possibilities, and THEN let them try to come up with a good solution :)

The IDers still call back to Steiner solution, which can be found even without genetic algorithms (although hardly by their own power). How about trying the experiment in some way that would DISQUALIFY Steiner solution? For example, imagine putting a line segment somewhere within the picture, and specifying that no line of the solution can cross that segment.>

That's not a bad idea actually. If a GA can come up with a better solution than the IDist, who presumably feel that they are more intelligent than a GA, then it completely blows away many of ID's criticisms of evolution as a theory, in a way that they can understand, ie a blind GA created a clever solution that an intelligent agent couldn't find.

That's not a bad idea actually [DISQUALIFYing the Steiner solution]. If a GA can come up with a better solution than the IDist, who presumably feel that they are more intelligent than a GA, then it completely blows away many of ID's criticisms of evolution as a theory, in a way that they can understand, ie a blind GA created a clever solution that an intelligent agent couldn't find.

If a GA can come up with a better solution than the IDist, who presumably feel that they are more intelligent than a GA, then it completely blows away many of ID's criticisms of evolution as a theory, in a way that they can understand, ie a blind GA created a clever solution that an intelligent agent couldn't find.

— demallien

Solution 1: steiner points: A = (86.6025, 150) B = (313.3975, 150) C = Fermat Point joining vertex 5,6,3 = (730.42, 224.88) A connects to Vertex 1, Vertex 4, Steiner Point B B connects Steiner Point A, Vertex 5, Vertex 2 C connects to Vertex 5, Vertex 6, Vertex 3

Solution 2: steiner points: A = (86.6025, 150) B = (313.3975, 150) C = Fermat Point joining vertex 2, vertex 6, vertex 3 = (730.42, 75.13) A connects to Vertex 1, Vertex 4, Steiner Point B B connects Steiner Point A, Vertex 5, Vertex 2 C connects to Vertex 2, vertex 6, vertex 3

Solution 3: steiner points: E = Fermat Point joining vertex 1,vertex 4, vertex 5 = (69.58, 224.88) F = (486.6025, 150) G = (713.3975, 150) E connects to Vertex 1, Vertex 4, Vertex 5 F connects to Vertex 5, Vertex 2, Steiner Point G G connects Steiner Point F, Vertex 6, Vertex 3

Solution 4: steiner points: E = Fermat Point joining vertex vertex 1, vertex 4, vertex 2 = (69.58, 75.13) F = (486.6025, 150) G = (713.3975, 150) E connects to Vertex 1, Vertex 4, Vertex 2 F connects to Vertex 5, Vertex 2, Steiner Point G G connects Steiner Point F, Vertex 6, Vertex 3

Here are the 4 proposed networks

— Salvador T. Cordova

I gotta question with which to bamboo-oozle you, oh Sal-of-the-structural-grasses:

When I-wish Dementski exposes his stupidity so publicly, his not-clever-beyond-measure cover story is that he's "really" engaging in *koff koff* street theater.

So when you pull stunts this ridiculous, hanging your intellectual cheeks out, forcing the entire internet to cover its metaphorical peepers in an effort to avoid seeing the unmentionable, whadda you call it?

Street cleaning? Squid porn? Science friction?

On second thought, I don't really wanna know.

THE CHALLENGE HAS BEEN CLOSED

Now that the ID community has officially weighed in, and since I'm frantically working on tomorrow's posting of the results, I declare this Challenge to be officially Closed.

I'll see you Monday with the results.

Dave

P.S.
It's funny -- of the over 30 other entries received, only Salvador Cordova's was posted publicly as a comment. Everyone else was able to follow the instructions, though. Curious, that.