Calin said:
Every time evolution is brought into discussion the ultimate reasoning in the evolutionist camp is that life is driven by the principle that among equals the fittest is set to survive and that `survival of the fittest` has nothing to do with chance.

Evolution has everything to do with chance! You don't get from a single cell to an organism with a fully developed eye just like that. Instead, there are very minor mutations (which are inherently random) that lead to even the slightest advantage for the organism to survive, which will increase the likelyhood of this trait being replicated more than other randomly mutated traits which don't have the same benefit. For example, organisms who grew a single cell that is receptive to a tiny bit of light will have a slight advantage over those that don't. And over time those small advantages will lead to an eye forming, and on the grand scale of things lead from a very basic organism to a complex like humans.

Calin said:
To my mind that`s the equivalent of a lightning bolt burning windows 95 on a CD.

Well, yeah. A lot of things that happened in our universe have been very unlikely. If the parameters at the beginning of the universe would have been even very slightly off, matter would likely have entirely evaporated before anything meaningfull could have formed. 99.9% of the universe are uninhabitable, and still we have (at least) earth where the parameters are just right for not only life to form, but also with enough elements/minerals that allowed us to grow to a huge civilization.

The thing is, all those things are not very likely, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have happened. In theory, who knows how many universes there have been before the current one, where perhaps 99.999% of them just didn't have any life at all? Time doesn't have much meaning without a living organism to experience it, so there could have been infinite possibilities for life to be created before it finally happened. I'd say that is true even on a smaller scale - who says that our current life came from the very first strike of lighting? Perhaps it took a few 10000 years of proteins forming and instantly dying before finally something formed that had this tiny advantage and managed to survive long enough to finally procreate into what we know today as life.

Calin said:
So basically randomly occurring DNA mutations get validated or invalidated by the `the survival of the fittest`.

Makes sense, but i still have a hard time believing that 'randomness + a lot of time' alone is enough to explain evolution, which looks like an intelligent system in the way it adapts and optimizes itself.

Calin said:
So my question is if we are just an organized form of dead matter (rock powder organized cleverly) why would dead matter want to perpetuate it`s form of organization.

Likely we are not passive dead matter, but active living matter, with the ability to do changes helping with a certain goal e.g. survival. And the same is true for evolution, which shows the same abilities and behaviors just at a larger scale.
We deal with the question in form of religion (invention) and science (observation), but we don't understand it's origin, reason and function. Seems we have to live with that. In the best case, we can give a partial answer by joining one of the two camps, which implies ignorance and self deception, but allows to pretend knowledge and understanding.

Personally i deal with the question like this: Our mind is a product of said processes, so our mind is unable to understand them. If we would, we would outsmart ourselves, similar to inventing a thinking machine which is smarter than humans. That's like a perpetuum mobile in some way, which is impossible. This philosophy helps me to accept i'll never know.

Still, i think this would be possible: We generate machines or algorithms which mimic evolution or intelligence. The machines can improve themselves with time. It may work, but if so, i'm sure we would again not understand completely why. Again we would conclude: It did happen by random luck, and we only understand parts of it.

JoeJ said:
Makes sense, but i still have a hard time believing that 'randomness + a lot of time' alone is enough to explain evolution, which looks like an intelligent system in the way it adapts and optimizes itself.

You can literally look at how neural networks are trained to see this effect in action. It starts with random reactions to the available input, with pretty much no sensible actions happening. But every few hundred generations, a few random outliners will do the right thing just by chance, getting a little bit further. And those are then selected to replicate, building an intelligente system over time, with nothing but a set of input=>outputs which the network has to link to make sense.
This is pretty much evolution as a program. And neigther are very intelligent in the processes they take; despite what it looks. Most of the participans simply die/don't get to replicate as a result of performing suboptimal at the start. If evolution was truly intelligent, it would simply know what steps are the most optimal instantly (like a programmer hand-crafting an AI). But thats not the case. So evolution is really not intelligent at all, its just brute-forcing with catastrophic casualties until you arrive at something good.

Juliean said:
building an intelligente system over time

Nah. The intelligence from your NN system still comes from the humans which made the program, so the example does not help to demystify the progression of dead rocks to brilliant Einstein.
What i mean is: Even if you succeed to make AGI, likely your AGI won't be able to answer our deepest questions either, even if it appears smarter than us.

So evolution is really not intelligent at all, its just brute-forcing with catastrophic casualties until you arrive at something good.

There is no proof of evolution to be not intelligent. And there can't be, as we lack understanding what intelligence and evolution precisely is.
I think you simplify to ‘pretend knowledge and understanding’, because that feels better to you emotionally. While i am quite fine with ‘i know that i don't know’, which is just another way to pretend knowledge we simply don't have.
In short: Philosophy is our only option to look at this. Because philosophy avoids the pitfalls to get stuck in one of the two camps. It's out of fashion in modern times, but still a good tool.

JoeJ said:
Nah. The intelligence from your NN system still comes from the humans which made the program, so the example does not help to demystify the progression of dead rocks to brilliant Einstein.

No, the humans just program the foundation for the network to exist, the network only becomes intelligent by creating the right neural connections itself. This does not give an answer to how the foundation of our reality came to be, but it does allow you to inspect how an absolutely dumb system of randomness grows into an intelligent structure pretty by the process of iterative learning.

JoeJ said:
There is no proof of evolution to be not intelligent. And there can't be, as we lack understanding what intelligence and evolution precisely is.

I do not need to prove the evolution is not intelligent. The burden of prove lies on the one who makes a claim; if you say evolution is intelligently designed then you have to prove it. Thats the basic grounds for any reasonable discussion. I'm nots aying evolution is 100% not intelligent, just that we are lacking any evidence that it is; on top of the fact the evolution is perfectly explainable without any intelligence and/or creator behind it, makes your claim pretty moot.

JoeJ said:
In short: Philosophy is our only option to look at this. Because philosophy avoids the pitfalls to get stuck in one of the two camps. It's out of fashion in modern times, but still a good tool.

Absolutely not. Even if we do not understand everything to a 100%, if we understand enough about it to make a reasonable assumption that thats how it is - until we find proof that its otherwise. Thats whats science does - it gives us a reasonable explanation given all the observable evidence we have, until more evidence comes up that proves the current theory invalid and replaces it with a new one. Its so incredibly intellectually dishonest to just say “oh we can't now absolutely for sure, thus we just have to throw science out all together and just speculate on whatever makes the most sense in my own head".

Juliean said:
but it does allow you to inspect how an absolutely dumb system of randomness grows into an intelligent structure pretty by the process of iterative learning.

Agree so far, but i don't see intelligence in NNs. They can not detect problems and come up with solutions on their own. We detect the problems, we define a voting mechanism to distinct good from bad solutions, we utilize non intelligent optimization processes to become a problem solver for this certain, single of problem. The resulting NN can not operate or understand general and unknown problems, so it can not improve or even survive outside it's predefined environment. It can't mimic life or intelligence, so it is no example applicable to explain evolution or human intelligence. It only is an example to eventually explain one of many building blocks of nature. If we now conclude to understand nature because we can do NNs, that's a form of ignorance.

Juliean said:
The burden of prove lies on the one who makes a claim; if you say evolution is intelligently designed then you have to prove it.

Juliean said:
And those are then selected to replicate, building an intelligente system over time

It was you claiming NNs emerge intelligence before me observing evolution shows intelligent patterns (e.g. generating Einstein, which to me is evidence enough).
To me, the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ describes our goal, not our current state of the art. And nobody seriously thinks we already have intelligent machines already now, while many think we will get them ‘soon’.
If you think we have, what's an example?

Juliean said:
Even if we do not understand everything to a 100%, if we understand enough about it to make a reasonable assumption that thats how it is

I have no better explanation than randomness either to explain Evolution, but if it would suffice we would already have simulations of evolution or intelligence. But we don't.
Imo, your assumption is not reasonable at all. To make it work, you need to invent a simple model of evolution so you can simulate it. And after that, you claim ability to simulate this invented model proofs you would understand the actual inspiration of your trial as well. As a consequence, your reasoning is closer to religion and belief than to science and facts. You are just unaware about this flaw.
It's a form of social overconfidence, typical for modern times. We replace superstition with a marketing lie of ‘science can explain everything’, which is just another form of superstition or religion.
Real science includes to accept that we don't know. After that we have two options to progress: Gain the knowledge, or - if this does not work - figure out why we can not know. Both gives profit.
But if you pretend we would already know, and our invented models would suffice, there is nothing more to learn after that.

Calin said:
you can`t define life saying its living matter, that`s a dog chasing his own tail. Is a chemical reaction in a recipe `passive dead matter` or `living matter` ? The Bible tells that even our last `hair` is accounted for. What I read from that is that everything can be quantified.

Exactly. I can not define life, and i doubt the bible could.