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In many ways the design challenge is similar to the Williams “active suspension” challenge. The created machine seemingly has a mind of its own but that “mind” is the creation of a smart personality. It is a robot feature.
It would be difficult to find anyone slow enough to observe a racing car blasting to the top of Pike’s Peak with minimal loss of power and fully believing that the car would somehow keep going once the road ended. The car is not going to transition into an airplane or a rocket, just because it has “adapted” to changing conditions during the race. What may look like evolution in fact is brilliantly integrated adaptation capacity. It is simply one good design doing what a brilliant designer intended. Maybe after one race to the Peak, the designer will come up with an improved design. Or a loser will set out to win and produce a better design. Aha! Evolution at work! And a new design will smoke the previous year’s design. Aha! Natural selection at work!
But the “active suspension” example and the “altitude compensating carburetor” example are Trojan Horses. We see similar design tactics used all around us - brilliant design tactics by brilliant personalities. And the world of biology is no different apart from being SO MUCH more complex. When an automotive or motorcycle engineer can come up with a car or bike that can run on a wildly different array of fuels and can reproduce – well – Wow! Good on you man! You are a GENIUS!
What about "survival of the fittest"? In the Pike's Peak race, the closest illustration of the concept might be that poorly engineered or prepared vehicles break down, leaving the "fittest" machines to win. But the biologic application is dependent on dramatic design and fabrication skill. It could be argued that drivers who have sharp minds and fast reflexes and general smarts gained through wise use of their earlier years are more likely to win and survive and reproduce and produce a new generation of winning talents. A driver who has maintained a reckless, cowboy life style (again a word (cowboy) that can have two meanings!) may be more likely to fly off a cliff compared to a more analytic engineering type of personality. (But maybe the cowboy was more fun at parties and is more fun to be around in general so I am not sure that survival of the fittest works too well with humans! Animals likely - humans - maybe not!)
But until human designers can come up with a racing vehicle that can reproduce and somehow tranfer acquired information as well as duplicated structure to the next generation, a copy of biologic "survival of the fittest" doesn't really exist. But note, biologic survival of the fittest simply gets rid of losers - organisms that have lost a vital element. Just as with evolution, complex new design features do not appear by magic. Designed adaptive mechanisms have limits. But if a glitch gets into the program, survival of the fittest gets rid of the glitch. Survival of the fittest is a brilliant design tool that only works for Super Designers who have mastery over basic functional design in conjunction with the wild design feature of "genetics and reproduction".
When you come across an old car such as the one pictured above you are quite sure there is a connection between it and the latest Formula 1 racer. You also know that there is likely an evolutionary connection. But unless you are a little child or mentally challenged, you are not going to assume that the process was due to evolution**. And you also KNOW that the evolution process was not like a smooth reversed movie of a candle burning. It was like a stop motion production where complex modules, complete and functional, keep snapping into place as the movie unfolds. The gas engine and the fuel production plant hit the scene at the same time just like the chicken and the egg had to hit the scene at the same time. There was never a car that had a Cooper Climax tail and a Williams FW15 front end. One half Cooper / one half FW15. Then one quarter Cooper / three quarters FW15. Evolution happens in designed jumps. Personalities and design smarts and construction smarts are behind every step.
Why then, when you see a trilobite or a dinosaur fossil or a sabre tooth tiger or some bone fragment that someone feels, perhaps correctly, belonged to a creature that looked similar to a monkey or a man, do you suddenly assume that evolution** makes sense? You see evolution taking place every day. You know that common sense tells you that hell will freeze over before you witness evolution** occurring.
Yet you buy the speculative line that there was a gradual progression from nothing to something. Somehow the complex structures we know existed in the past miraculously developed. And those lead to the complex structures that exist now, humans being one of those complex structures. Why the disconnect? Count the balls in the “perpetual motion” machine. Count the Fs on the card. Blow the smoke away!
Evolution and evolution**, two radically different concepts, have been blended into one meaning via the smoke and mirrors of “eons of time”. Life is by the moment. Evolution** if such a flight of fantacy even existed is claimed to be by the eon.
If your child was choking to death and you called the Evolution** 911 number you would get a recording that says “Thank you for calling 911. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and an assistant will be with you in 500,000 years. Please don’t hang up in order to maintain your position in the lineup.” Would your child have children?
Forgive my sarcasm but the situation is not only foolish. It is also extremely damaging.
The altitude compensating carburetor is a simple illustration of a designer building in an adaptation feature to make a product much more useful. If this carb company could make a carb that would also let you run your quad on tree leaves or pine sap or pop or greasy potatoe chips or steak or spinach, they would deserve some sort of major reward!
A trilobite! Nothing simple about a trilobite. Have you seen them for sale at Walmart, perhaps made in China? They would be very difficult to design and build. As far as I know they are extinct. So is the old car pictured above.
I think this is a scull of what was believed to be a sabre toothed tiger. There is a lot of similarity between this remant and the bones of current tigers. Clearly there is a connection. Evolution** and roulette wheels don't explain the situation. Like Jim Corbett's thought, it looks like a matter that needs to be checked out. And let's make sure that we don't pull a Kettering "we have the answer for sure but it seems the answer is incorrect".
Are we looking at an imaginary creature. Is this a fake, planted to fool us? Did it live in the recent past?
I looks real and it looks old!
It also looks a bit like a Studebaker and I think that company has been out of business for a long time.
Again, it looks like something that requires an ANSWER and not a fairy tale**.
I have heard stories about how the beaver got its flat tail or why the crow is black and caws. I'd like a better quality of story than those stories!
Everyone has heard the line about there not being any atheists on life rafts in the Pacific. The crunch is that we all have one fragile life with a somewhat black hole at the end, combined with expansive mental boundaries. When we are up against the wall, our thought processes suddenly change and the huge gulf between potential and momentary reality is sure to rattle anyone, at least slightly!
When Robinson Crusoe saw footprints on the island he was on, he recognized the implications. The story is somewhat fabricated but the point is solid. The foot prints were Big. In the story he was concerned about cannibals – BIG cannibals! In our case the footprints we see all around us are huge and there is strong evidence that we do not need to worry about a Huge cannibal. Rather there seems to be a HUGE Friend around but He isn’t a pushy sort. - - - - Really?! - - - - - Why??
Hey! Let’s go racing at the Isle of Man!
Here are some graphics of the famous "footprint discovery" by Robinson Crusoe. Simple structure of "something" can tell us a great deal about unseen realities. We are not dumb asses!
This shot in my back yard tells me that there is a dog or cat-like creature around. I also know that there is a complex manufacturing plant, a distribution system, and a parts supply system somewhere that allows a vehicle to be functioning somewhere close to where I live. I know too that somewhere there are skilled designers and workmen. My experience also tells me that there is a fuel refinery somewhere and a distribution and outlet system associated with that project as well.
If those foot prints hadn't been made moments before with my own feet, I would know that someone had been recently trespassing on my property. But why wouldn't I wonder if perhaps the foot prints, which are really quite simple, evolved**? If I laid such a line on just about anyone, as they walked with me, they would question my sanity. We live in a wonderfully organized world that thankfully is very predictable, if we understand it. We do not live in a roulette wheel world. Complex structures are like words that quietly shout at us. If I claimed that the bit of grass in the photo evolved**, my statement wouldn't raise too many eyebrows, foolish as that statement actually is!
More tracks. Mine are planted. If I had time to be observant and was experienced at being so, I could likely tell which one of my cattle made the hoof prints. The size of the print and the distance between the prints and even the shape and depth of the indentation should give a skilled tracker enough info to make a good guess. We live in a world of tracks and foot prints and there is a wealth of information revealed by them. A foot print combined with a dropped piece of paper or a bottle cap or a tiny item of any type can tell an observer a lot. How sensitive or insensitive are we?
( Continued after photos.)
