No. Yatzee is yatzee. You can use any dice game you'd like. I just picked one to show that I don't need to understand the underlying physics of how dice land to understand and use the results in a game. Which brings me back to the underlying point: in direct distinction to your idea, scientists do NOT need to understand the underlying mechanisms of results to draw valid conclusions about them.
We have NO CLUE how many of our medications exactly work today, yet we can prescribe them anyway due to the certainty of the expected results. We have NO CLUE how the underlying mechanisms of the brain work, yet the fields of neurology, neuroradiology, and neurosurgery are alive and thriving. And this is all because valid conclusions can still be drawn based on the reproducible nature of the results, REGARDLESS of the underlying mechanisms.
The problem here is that you are comparing two systems that do not correlate. I think a better analogy would be weather, since metereology is now advanced enough to make accurate weather predictions possible. We had been observing and documenting weather for hundreds of years, but it was not until we understood enough about the underlying physics to make accurate models that actually work. Die rolls are simple, and easily understood, and we knew all we needed to know about the physics involved when Newton articulated his Three laws of Motion.
Biology is a lot more complex, which is why we do not understand how medications work. This despite the fact that modern medicine has the exact same tools available that modern meteorology does. We still do not know why a medicine works, which is why we have to carefully monitor everyone that takes them to see exactly how they react.
We have the science of neurology in order to learn about the brain and how it works, with the potential to understand exactly how to fix problems. At present we rely more on educated guesswork than science, a bit like the first doctors who used blood transfusions. They knew it worked, most of the time, and had no idea why it failed until someone worked out a method of typing blood.
While you are correct that we do not need to understand the underlying science in order to make something work, if it didn't help doctors would not be required to study all the basics before they could start practicing on real people.
And again I ask: what's the practical difference of results? If a die rolls 6 one million times to every roll of 1, the 1 is still important in the statistics. In the real world however, that 1 is useless. It's zero. It's as if it wasn't on the die in the first place. Because you seem to keep forgetting that every time the die is rolled, the probability of rolling a 1 keeps decreasing. It approximates zero.
So this once again comes back to misapplication of statistical ideas onto a biological system. Whereas statistics cares about the very small outliers, biology has a cutoff after which the outliers are seen as..... outliers.
Lets try this again.
If we have a d6 that only rolls 3s or 4s we will end up with a lot more of those numbers than we do if we have a weighted die that is biased toward those numbers, because we would still end up with the other 4 numbers in addition to the ones we are arbitrarily selecting for. You might not see the difference, but it is a real, and both demonstrable and repeatable.
What are the other choices between survival or death?
Which is where you are seriously getting off track. Evolution does not actually care about survival or death, so that is obviously not what we should be focusing on either. It might make a difference to us, but why should it make a difference to the universe?
Mathematic computer modeling is either random or deterministic. You keep going back to the two extremes where either there is a static equation that leads to a specific outcome, or if that doesn't happen, things must be random. That's simply not true. Lack of pre-determination does not equate to randomness. Your next response, for example, is not pre-determined, but I would bet it's going to maintain the same stance you've been having, which is not random. For all I know, you could change your mind and agree with me, but that still doesn't make your answer random or deterministic.
No I don't, you keep trying to force me to make that choice by claiming that this is about life or death. All I am saying is that mathematics clearly demonstrates that a random factor in an equation necessitates a random result. I used to run psuedo-random generators and they all had one thing in common, if you ran them long enough you would eventually reach the point where they stop working. That is what happens when you have a deterministic model in math, its own predictability and lack of flexibility eventually causes it to run down. Psuedo-random systems are deterministic, in that they will always produce the same result, but until all the variables are input the outcome is not necessarily predictable.
On the other hand, something can be random, and still statistically predictable. A simple example of this is a deck of cards. If you name any two cards, say a queen and a 4, I can all but guarantee that they will be within one card of each other in a totally randomized deck. I can also demonstrate that dealing 25 random cards out of that deck will enable me to put together 5 pat hands from those cards more than 95% of the time. (I do not remember the odds exactly, but they are north of 98%.) Completely random, yet predictable.
You seem to think I believe that randomness and predictability somehow cancel each other out, or even that determinism means it is predictable. I have a better grasp of the terms than that, and my opposition to determinism has nothing to do with predictability. It is entirely philosophical, and I will fight it until someone offers conclusive proof that I am wrong.
Evolution has demonstrated an ability to adapt to extremes and continue beyond the point where a deterministic system would fail, in my opinion, why weighs toward it being random. It has also progressed far enough that it is predictable.
Let's make our dice evolutionary. Every roll, the "numbers" on each die change based on a random mutation. For simplicity's sake, let's say that half of our mutations are lethal and they represent 1-3, and the other half allow the organism to survive whatever environment it happens to be in and represent 4-6. We roll a million dice under these constraints, and "kill" all the ones with 1-3. After the first roll, how many dice are expected to be left? What numbers do they show? Will they EVER show 1-3? Well no, because the end point is defined as 4-6 only. It will never even out.
It actually works more like this.
Random Mutation Generator
The watch that gets formed in the end is not pre-determined. In fact they are very different from one another between runs of the simulation. But the results are not random either. Non-random, non-determined variability.
Actually, the fact that they are different proves that they are random. You are just misapplying the term by looking at the result rather than the process. We have a starting set of parts, either the elements of the clock in the experiment you provided, or DNA/RNA in biology. Given a limited set of building blocks the result is also limited, that does not make it not random. It does not matter how many times you shuffle and deal a single deck of cards, you will never end up with a hand that has two Aces of Spades.
This is a great question.
Thanks, I wish I knew the answer.
And yet this example "evens out". It's radially symmetrical. For every pattern that stretches out in one direction there is an equal and opposite pattern. This only goes so far as to be the equivalent of random mutation. And when they placed a very small filter on the fractal, the change that took place was not random. I would go so far as to say that every time a pencil were to be placed on the fractal at the same angle, it would produce the same greater result, while maintaining variability within the visible portions. This can be seen in your video at 2:12 in your video, when the pencil is still. It's a non-random result with randomness within it. But again, I'm looking at the big picture result, and you seem to only focus on the static in between.
What do you suppose would happen if half the fractal were blocked?
It wouldn't matter, because that blockage would still be replicated up, and down, the scale. That is what makes fractals so fascinating, and nature is full of fractals.
Evolution is not a result, it is a process, and it is still ongoing. We tend to forget that when we look around and talk about it, but that does not change the fundamental truth that we are not at the end of evolution, we are in the middle of it. That is why I refuse to look at the end, because I know I cannot see it.
I have to admit i forget that a lot.
