I would love to see how the deviations occured. It seem very unlikely that some of those jumps would happen; I mean, did they have a few idiots, "line trolls", or blind people come in to shake things up?

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The experiment looks reasonable to prove a point. Kinda like a game of telephone with scribbles. But I don't get why it jumps so much all of a sudden. I would say, do this experiment again a few times. show video of people drawing in time lapse, with a digitized version of drawing on the side.

I was waiting for the punch line, like the drawing ending up looking like a pair of bewbs or something.

>> ^BoneRemake:

This makes absolutely no sense to me.


The people tracing the line only see the last line before theirs. Bcause noone can trace the previous line exactly like the one before, little differences occur.

In nature, no two people of different mothers are alike, because every time the genes involved change in miniscule ways = variation.

Unless several of his volunteers had Parkinson's, many of those deviations make no sense at all.

That's certainly interesting. But I suspect the effect has quite a lot to do with people just not being able to draw properly with a mouse. Also, since this was done without observation online, there's evidence of people just ignoring the instructions and screwing around, like the V that appears at 1:11.

I wonder what would happen if someone did the same experiment in person with tracing paper; throwing out any submissions where the subject wasn't making a good faith effort to follow instructions.

Here's more info on the methods from the original post:

A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing -- trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves -- kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.
A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals was first created as a tool to be used in conjunction with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk -- an online labor market. Mechanical Turk workers were payed 2 cents to trace a line.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

>> ^BoneRemake:
This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The people tracing the line only see the last line before theirs. Bcause noone can trace the previous line exactly like the one before, little differences occur.
In nature, no two people of different mothers are alike, because every time the genes involved change in miniscule ways = variation.


Thanks, makes sense now that I know they did not see the lines previous just the one previous. I was trying to grasp how it all of a sudden looked like an upside down question mark, it seemed ridiculous.

It would also be interesting to have all 500 lines drawn on the same panel.

Some of those jumps were ridiculous. Of the 500, how many 2 year olds or retarded monkeys were thrown in?

how drunk were these people?

IP Man! That's what that music is from. I was racking my brain trying to figure out why that music sounded so familiar. It's Ip Man. I win.

LOL thias has pritty much nothing to do with evolution more to do with "noise" and data corruptions for this to be an analgy to evolutoin u would have to enfirce an environmental factor that cussed the "noise" to progate in varouse directions due to selective benefit.

i was expecting it to end up as a picture of the devil

Damnit. It was so close to becoming a penis.

>> ^entr0py:
... in conjunction with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk -- an online labor market. Mechanical Turk workers were payed 2 cents to trace a line.


FUCK I hate when people type "payed". I know it wasn't you but of all "teh" different spellings the "Internets" has come up with, the mispelling of paid just gets to me for some reason.

THIS GUY IS A TRACER!

>> ^entr0py:

That's certainly interesting. But I suspect the effect has quite a lot to do with people just not being able to draw properly with a mouse. Also, since this was done without observation online, there's evidence of people just ignoring the instructions and screwing around, like the V that appears at 1:11.


Oh, well damn, that's makes a lot more sense now. I figured they were out on the street with a pad & pencil. I'd say this experiment is totally unreliable.

A lot of that is certainly instrument error.. Have you guys ever used a digital drawing pad? They are prone to chaotic jumps and don't feel "normal" when you use them.

It's kinda about evolution until someone mucks it up. Then it starts again with a new pattern. But it doesn't show anything about a species evolving.

This one is really about evolution.

Where was the part where all the big jumps clearly drawn by trolls die before successfully reproducing?

Not a very good metaphor for Darwinian evolution at all, this merely illustrates mutation without the natural selection and differential survival part. Many of these mutations would have been unsuccessful, and would have most certainly died out.

I agree that this test does need to be run multiple times, not only to demonstrate the veracity of its message, but also to show, in the end, the vast array of finished products.

I clicked on a porn video and by the time it reached my computer, all I got is this crappy doodle. Not sexy at all.

If only we could have seen the lower half of that random V.... I am guessing it would have revealed

SUCKIT TREBEK

All they needed was a straightedge :-/

This doesn't seem right. Asian-themed classical music to a video about morons who cant come close to drawing a straight line that is already drawn? I have a feeling I'm gonna feel bad when I see the original and it's kids with helmets doing the drawing.

Better experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcuBvj0pw-E

See, this is why I don't crowd-source my tracing.

With a little luck (arbitrary events to my advantage), this might be my first ever 1st place sift.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

With a little luck (arbitrary events to my advantage), this might be my first ever 1st place sift.


Grats! Just barely got it to #1. That How-An-LCD-Screen-Works video has momentum now.

With all due respect, isn't this more of an example of the aging process rather than evolution? If it were evolution the line would get straighter and straighter over time with the unfit ones weeded out (or the line would come closer to some other arbitrary goal).

But in this case, errors add up and multiply over time, which is what happens as an animal ages right? The total sum of errors eventually causing the organism to stop working at all.

An interesting experiment, but not related to evolution really. At least not biological evolution.

>> ^therealblankman:

Not a very good metaphor for Darwinian evolution at all, this merely illustrates mutation without the natural selection and differential survival part. Many of these mutations would have been unsuccessful, and would have most certainly died out.


>> ^westy:

LOL thias has pritty much nothing to do with evolution more to do with "noise" and data corruptions for this to be an analgy to evolutoin u would have to enfirce an environmental factor that cussed the "noise" to progate in varouse directions due to selective benefit.


>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^DerHasisttot:
>> ^BoneRemake:
This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The people tracing the line only see the last line before theirs. Bcause noone can trace the previous line exactly like the one before, little differences occur.
In nature, no two people of different mothers are alike, because every time the genes involved change in miniscule ways = variation.

Thanks, makes sense now that I know they did not see the lines previous just the one previous. I was trying to grasp how it all of a sudden looked like an upside down question mark, it seemed ridiculous.

I think many people are missing the main point of this video. No, it does not show biological evolution via natural selection in an accurate way, but I don't think it was ever meant to do such a thing. What this video does succeed in showing is the evolution of a line over time due to the build up of random mutations. It does NOT show evolution via natural selection, because there is no selection involved of any kind, natural or otherwise.

Think of it as displaying the evolution of a neutral phenotype (something the organism has that is not selected for or against by nature). If we look at it in that context, then it is a perfect analogy.

>> ^zombieater:

I think many people are missing the main point of this video. No, it does not show biological evolution via natural selection in an accurate way, but I don't think it was ever meant to do such a thing. What this video does succeed in showing is the evolution of a line over time due to the build up of random mutations. It does NOT show evolution via natural selection, because there is no selection involved of any kind, natural or otherwise.
Think of it as displaying the evolution of a neutral phenotype (something the organism has that is not selected for or against by nature). If we look at it in that context, then it is a perfect analogy.


Your point might be valid were not the video titled as "An illuminating metaphor for the process of biological evolution".

Just sayin'

>> ^therealblankman:

>> ^zombieater:
I think many people are missing the main point of this video. No, it does not show biological evolution via natural selection in an accurate way, but I don't think it was ever meant to do such a thing. What this video does succeed in showing is the evolution of a line over time due to the build up of random mutations. It does NOT show evolution via natural selection, because there is no selection involved of any kind, natural or otherwise.
Think of it as displaying the evolution of a neutral phenotype (something the organism has that is not selected for or against by nature). If we look at it in that context, then it is a perfect analogy.

Your point might be valid were not the video titled as "An illuminating metaphor for the process of biological evolution".
Just sayin'


Touché.

http://videosift.com/video/Evolution-Explained-In-One-Simple-Line