False Claim in Evolution 2.0 - All codes whose origin we know are designed

This is the fourth post in a series reviewing Perry Marshall's Book Evolution 2.0, Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design. To see the first post with links to each article in the series, start here. 

In Perry Marshall's book Evolution 2.0, he falsely claims:

"All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information. Therefore DNA was designed by a mind." (pg 192, emphasis added)

On his website he gives us a challenge, offering millions of dollars to the person that can prove him wrong (though, as you'll see in my post on the challenge, it's specifically worded so that he will never have to pay). In the challenge he says:

"Show an example of information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one" (pulled from cosmicfingerprints.com/solve/ on June 3, 2016)

In his book he goes on to say:

"The prize goes to the first person who discovers a natural process that produces a complete communication system without having to specify (design) the encoding and decoding rules in advance. Such a process, if discovered, would revolutionize modern science." (pg 201, emphasis added)

Well, as it turns out, scientists have discovered a natural process that produces code without a mind, and it did revolutionize modern science! It's called... wait for it... evolution by natural selection!

In my last post I showed how creatures with minds can develop "communication systems without having to specify the encoding and decoding rules in advance". If you haven't yet read that post, I recommend doing so before moving on. Here I will build on that post showing how the same simple rules can allow any two evolving entities, with or without thinking minds, to develop communication systems as well. Intelligent designers need not apply.

Here we'll look at not just one, but two of the many known and documented examples of evolved communication systems: that between plants and pollinators, and that between bacteria. After each example I'll outline what we know about how each system evolved. Finally, I'll end by showing how Perry Marshall could edit his book to make it accurate.

Evolved Communication System Between Plants and Pollinators
Flowering plants, even though they don't have thinking minds, actively communicate with insects and other pollinators on a regular basis. This communication system evolved under selective pressure to improve their reproduction. Insects carry plant pollen (similar to sperm in mammals) from one plant to the next, where it's able to fertilize the second plant's seeds. In simple terms, bugs help flowering plants have sex. Flowers are relatively new in evolutionary history, the first fossils date to about 130 million years ago. Most plants before then used wind or environmental water to transfer their sperm to other plants instead. Insects, however, are much more efficient.

Flowers act as encoded messages between plants and pollinators. Bright colored pigments and strong smelling fragrances are signals, telling animals that the plants are ready for pollination. A nectar treat is often provided as a bribe to get the animal to do the work (though some insects simply eat pollen, spreading crumbs from plant to plant which also does the job). When a flower has been thoroughly pollinated, the plant stops producing fragrances, and produces oxidizing enzymes instead. These enzymes dull the pigments and eventually kill the petals of the flower. A simplified breakdown of the plant's evolved code can be understood as follows:

The plant encodes the message, transmits it via the flower, and the bee (or other pollinator) decodes the message and obeys its orders. This is a legitimate coded system that developed without any need of intervention from a designer.

How did the flower communication system evolve? 
In the last post we learned that in humans and other thinking animals, codes can emerge from noise through a process described in signalling theory:

1. Cues are accidentally transmitted by a sender
2. Meaning is assigned to the cue by a receiver
3. The sender, if rewarded for sending the cue, can then amplify the cue, making it a "signal"

This process works quickly for creatures with brains, but also works on a longer time scale for anything capable of evolving through descent with modification, acted upon by selection.

The evolution of flowers

While we can't go back in time to see how flowers initially evolved, we can examine fossil evidence, as well as look at examples of non-flowering plants alive today for clues on how this ability may have evolved. To keep things short, I'll just go over comparative anatomy here.

Before flowers evolved, plants mainly transferred pollen to their mates via the wind or moving water. Many of these plants' descendants are still alive today and continue to use the wind. A cone from Pinus taeda is shown below. When the season is right, it releases puffs of pollen into the air to be carried by the wind to potential mates.

By Pinethicket at English Wikipedia

Pollen is extremely nutritious and is, therefore, eaten by many insects. As you can see above, the bright yellow pollen can act as a visual cue, accidentally alerting insects of its presence. This is step 1 in the process of evolving a signal!

Any insect that either learns or evolves to associate the color yellow with pollen, will have access to nutritious food and be favored by natural selection. This is step 2 in the process of evolving a signal!

Many plants defend against pollen eaters by producing bad tasting or even toxic chemicals in their pollen. Other's, however, have evolved to exploit the pest's activities. Pollen eaters often visit multiple plants in their quest for food. Any pollen stuck to their bodies can pollinate female cones on other plants. This can give a plant a reproductive advantage because insects are often more accurate than the wind at finding the other cones that need to be fertilized. Under these conditions, any mutation in a plant that makes its pollen cue stronger (brighter colored pigments for example) can be magnified by natural selection. Once this happens, Step 3 in the development of language has occurred, a legitimate signal has evolved!

Beetle attracting pollen cone - Photo by L. Shyamal 

There are several examples of non-flowering plants that have evolved signalling behavior with insects. In many cases, it's much milder than what we see in flowering plants. Cycadales for example, are an order of gymnosperms (non-flowering plants) that have developed a pollination relationship with beetles. Pigmented cones appear to act as a signal to the beetles when pollen is ready. Smilar signaling strategies have evolve in other species. Studying these systems helps us understand how the flowering system likely started.

Evolved Communication System Between Bacteria
Bacteria are tiny creatures living in a world of giants. As such, it's often a survival advantage for them to work as a group to get a task done, either when digesting a large food source, or trying to defend against an enemy. Bacteria don't have eyes, ears, or thinking minds like we do. That said, they have evolved communication systems that allow them to detect and then automatically coordinate their efforts with neighbors.

Many bacteria make and send out chemical signals called acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs)  which you can think of as smells. Most species studied have at least one scent or “word” they use to communicate with others of their kind. The system consists of an enzyme (encoder) that produces the communication molecule (message) which then seeps out into their surroundings. A receptor on the cell wall (decoder), which is similar to the receptors you have in your nose, detects the scent and triggers the bacteria to behave in a specific way.

When a bacteria is alone, it will catch an occasional whiff of its own AHLs but the scent is weak. When the bacteria is surrounded by friends, the smell is overwhelming, triggering behaviors that are only successful when all the cells participate in unison.

This is how bacteria of the same species talk and automatically coordinate their efforts.

For the most part, each species has it’s own AHL molecule which can only be detected by other members of the species. This essentially means their language consists of one word, and is private. That said, most bacteria also make a universal molecule called AI-2.

At least two species, Vibrio harveyi and Salmonella typhimurium, have receptors for their own secret AHLs, but also have receptors that detect AI-2s from other species! This means that in their world, not only can they smell how many friends are near, they can also smell how many strangers are around. As you might expect, different behaviors are triggered by different ratios of AHLs and AI-2s.

Many more signals in the bacteria’s language likely exist and are just waiting for us to discover them. That said, we can present what we know so far in the translation chart below:

How did bacterial communication evolve?
So far, the origin of the AHL molecule has not yet been discovered. AI-2, on the other hand, is now known to have started out as.... wait for it... an accidental cue!

Researchers initially thought AI-2 was a special molecule produced exclusively for inter-species communication, but in 2002, AI-2 was discovered to be a simple waste product, bacterial urine if you will.

Vibrio harveyi and Salmonella typhimurium both evolved receptors to pick up on the cue which essentially allows them to count strangers. Both have since evolved unique behaviors that are triggered by the smell of strangers, and it appears they have also evolved ways to control when and how much AI-2 they will release. If it's true that they really can control release of AI-2, then it has gone from being a simple cue, to a legitimate signal!

How Perry Marshall's book should be edited

Biologists have been studying and carefully documenting the evolution of coded communication for several decades now. If Perry wishes to be honest in his portrayal of scientific knowledge, the message of his book should be modified as follows:

"DNA is code. All codes whose origin we know are either designed by a mind, or have evolved through natural selection. Therefore, the genetic code was either designed by a mind, evolved, or produced by a currently unknown process."

Most scientists investigating the origin of life are doing so under the hypothesis that the genetic code evolved into its current form. This hypothesis brings us to the question of our next post: Can evolution work without the genetic code?

Spoiler alert, the answer is yes!

Further reading
Signalling theory and the use of language in bacteria
Flowers and the fossil record New cue detection directly observed evolving in bacteria (in this case, they detected a new food: D-Arabinose) An overview of signalling theory with many examples of naturally evolved communication systems (see chapter 14)

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False claim from Evolution 2.0 - The rules of a language are always defined in advance

This is the third post in a series reviewing Perry Marshall's Book Evolution 2.0, Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design. To see the first post with links to each article in the series, start here. 

On page 185 of Perry Marshall’s book, Evolution 2.0, we see 1 of 3 major factual errors the author makes throughout its pages. Don’t get me wrong, the book contains many more than 3 factual errors but this one is the first of 3 that erroneously lead him to his big conclusion: the genetic code must have been intelligently designed.

“The rules of any communication system are always defined in advance by a process of deliberate choices. There must be prearranged agreement between sender and receiver, otherwise communication is impossible.” page 185, emphasis added

This claim is presented time and again throughout the book as what he thinks is an impassable chicken-and-egg conundrum. Each time he insists the rules of a code or language must be designed in advance. 

“The broader question of life itself is a chicken-and-egg one... why would a code appear before there was anything to code?” page 202, emphasis added

While it is true that some codes/languages have been designed in advance (binary code, morse code and so on), this is actually the exception to the norm. Languages usually emerge gradually from accidental ques. Here I’ll show you how intelligent creatures (like humans, dogs, and birds) are able to use their brains to develop languages from ques. In future posts I’ll show you that creatures without thinking brains, and even what most people would consider to be non-living chemical systems, are also capable of developing codes from accidental cues through the simple process of evolution—descent with modification, acted upon by selection.

The entertaining case of an emerging new language between humans

I have an identical twin brother. His name is Mike. When we were born our parents spent many hours each day playing with us and speaking to us in hopes that we might learn English—a communication system with rules established well in advance, just like Perry Marshall would expect. The problem was, no matter how much time my parents spent with us, Mike and I spent even more time with each other.

Though we were slowly learning English, at about 2 years old we had also established a mini-language of our own that our parents didn’t understand. Simple as it was, we used it successfully to coordinate secret plans like how to steal candy our parents had stashed on top of the refrigerator, or how to unravel and flush entire rolls of toilet paper without getting stopped by our Mom. Sadly, the only word from our secret language that I still remember today is “guguk”. It means “candy”. How did this word develop?

If we were to take Perry Marshall’s claim literally—that “the rules of any communication system are always defined in advance”—we would be forced to assume that some outside intelligence, God perhaps, delivered the word “guguk” into our minds with the meaning defined in advance. This, however, is clearly not true.

According to people who study signalling theory, when both the sender and receiver have assigned meaning to a word (or a behavior, smell, sign ect), researchers call the word a “signal”. When only the receiver has assigned meaning to a word, researchers call the word a “cue”.

To see how this works for things beside words, let’s leave the babies for a second and think about bears in the woods.

An aside about bears, signalling theory, and the Boy Scouts of America!
Humans and bears have clashed violently for centuries. Black bears can usually overpower humans in a fair fight but it’s risky business and humans usually cheat. Because of this, bears don’t usually like to take their chances. If loud enough, the sounds that humans accidentally make with their feet when walking through the woods act as “cues” for the bears, alerting them to our presence and allowing them to run away long before they find themselves in fighting distance. In this case, the accidental sounds we make are considered “cues” by researchers, because at this point, only the bear (the receiver) has assigned meaning to the sound.

Because bears sometimes don’t hear footsteps until it's too late, as a Boy Scout, I was told that when walking through dense bear territory, I should stomp my feet extra hard or loudly sing. This would make sure any bears knew I was coming and allow them to distance themselves before an encounter. When behaving like this, researchers would say that I went from sending an accidental “cue”, to actively sending a “signal” to the bear.

When senders of cues are rewarded for transmission and begin magnifying their cues, the cues officially become signals.

Now back to the story of my brother and I:

The word “guguk” didn’t start out as a signal. Like footsteps in the forest, it started out as an accidental cue. Babies like to babble and the sounds of their babbles often change with their moods. One of us (we don’t remember which one but let’s just say it was Mike) tended to babble in a similar way every time he was eating or seeing candy. He was accidentally transmitting a cue. I noticed this cue and made an association. Each time I heard the transmission, I knew to look his way and I would likely find sweets. Maybe the sweets were being handed out for free, or maybe Mike spotted them in some hiding place. Either way it was worth my attention.

Once Mike realized I regularly responded to his accidental babble of “guguk”, he started magnifying the babble, making it louder and clearer to alert me of candy. He might have done this out of goodwill (we are close friends and, like many social animals, we are rewarded with pleasure from helping each other out). Mike might have also been alerting me to the presence of candy for more selfish reasons—he wanted my help getting it. In either case, the act of him magnifying the cue to modify my behavior transformed the noise from an accidental cue, to a meaningful signal. A legitimate language was beginning to emerge.

3 simple steps for producing language from accidental cues

In a simple 3 step process, Mike and I had transformed noise into language

1. Cues are accidentally transmitted by a sender (in this case, Mike's babbling)
2. Meaning is assigned to the cue by a receiver (in this case I associated the babble with candy)
3. The sender, being rewarded for sending the cue, amplifies the cue, making it a signal (in this case, Mike pronounced the babble "guguk" louder and clearer in hopes that I would respond)

Humans are instinctively obsessed with verbal language. We constantly mimic and deliberately try to learn and teach the meanings of signals to each other. These behaviors speed up the process of code production but these special human traits are not actually needed to get the process going. Any two entities that are either capable of learning with their minds, or adapting to their surroundings through the process of evolution, can develop codes for communication through this simple 3 step process.

Contrary to Perry Marshall’s repeated claim in his book Evolution 2.0, languages/codes do not need to be decided upon in advance. Languages can emerge as two learning or evolving entities interact with and adapt to one another.

The unpassable chicken-and-egg conundrum Perry Marshall thinks he has found is simply an illusion. In the next post I’ll show how languages emerge between evolving entities that don’t have thinking minds.

Further Reading

For more information on how languages emerge, there are many places to learn about signalling theory. It has developed in many different fields and has wide applications. Below are two of my favorite overviews:

Overview of Signalling theory in business

Overview of Signalling theory in biology

This is the third post in a series reviewing Perry Marshall's Book Evolution 2.0, Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design. To see the first post with links to each article in the series, start here. 

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