Comments on: Tunes without composers: music naturally evolves on DarwinTunes

By: Bret Beheim

Bret Beheim — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:22:22 +0000

Several of the commenters are missing the value of this project to evolutionary anthropology. MacCallum and his team have shown how cumulative cultural transmission can operate just like plant and animal domestication. Random variation is culled by human preferences to produce new design. Very cool stuff.

By: Donald

Donald — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 13:41:22 +0000

Not quite useless. It illustrates that a combination of random variation and selection can produce an adaption–in this case, a tune that people like. Not exactly surprising, but many creationists have trouble grasping it. They will probably dismiss this by arguing that the selection came from intelligent listeners, which is true, but misses the point.

So come to think of it, it is useless. Nothing will convince a creationist.

By: DavidB

DavidB — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:14:14 +0000

Well, I always suspected that Steve Reich and Philip Glass were just computers in disguise…

By: Walter S. Andriuzzi

Walter S. Andriuzzi — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:13:24 +0000

Gotta agree with Michael Scott Cuthbert and Rangutan: this research is useless. Kinda cool, but useless

By: bradbell.tv

bradbell.tv — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:47:58 +0000

It provides no proof of anything musical or evolutionary or scientific or perceptual or anything! It’s brilliant!

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:40:24 +0000

Is this really an example of evolution? These iterations had an end goal, something palatable to the human ear. Evolution yes, but not precisely. If I have a big and diverse bowl of food and spices and I make some chicken curry with rice pilaf, the food didnt evolve…..

By: GWhiz

GWhiz — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:55:15 +0000

The random starting point and the random mutations are what is guiding this more than peoples choices. If the scope of the random mutations possible was different, the tune would evolve differently, very significantly so.

By: matt

matt — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:30:37 +0000

the little bass part on the final generation, at 21 and 29 seconds, is very awesome.

By: Rangutan

Rangutan — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:50:38 +0000

Boring!
Like for colours and patterns, there is a limited amount of interesting tones and tunes!
My view: this is a waist of precious time.
GRR2012

By: Mode

Mode — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:12:23 +0000

Sounds like Geinoh Yamashirogumi…
Just… awesome.