Re your post here:
- If you came across a table on which was set 500 coins (no tossing involved) and all 500 coins displayed the “heads” side of the coin, how on earth would you test “chance” as a hypothesis to explain this particular configuration of coins on a table?
Even if the observer was not party to the information that there was “no tossing involved”?
The reason I ask, is that you seem to have revealed an conceptual error that IMO bedevils much discussion about evolution as an explanation for the complexity of life.
Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis.
Some explanatory hypotheses are stochastic, meaning that they invoke a mechanism that is indeterminate in some way. One such hypothesis might be “fair coins were fairly tossed”, where “tossing” is itself a stochastic process with a known probability distribution – but we can reject this hypothesis in this case, either because we know, a priori, that there was “no tossing involved”, or because the pattern is vanishingly unlikely under the hypothesis of “fair coins, fairly tossed”.
This is not because we “reject chance as a hypothesis” but because, under the null hypothesis of “fair coins, fairly tossed”, there is a very small chance aka probability that they would all land heads.
So can we please jettison this canard that “Darwinists” propose chance either as as an explanation for the complexity of life, or even as the explanation for an unfeasibly long string of tossed heads?
Statistics is all about chance and chance is crucial to hypothesis testing, but it is never an explanatory hypothesis. In fact, it’s to what we attribute the portion of the variance of the data our model does not predict. It is also intrinsic to the probability distributions we propose for our data both under our null and under our study hypothesis.
And it is also crucial to the concept of sampling: if sample data as, or more, extreme than our data are very unlikely i.e. have a very slim chance, under our null we can reject our null.
But chance itself explains nothing. It is the exact reverse: Chance is what we call the part of our data we can’t explain.
What we can use to explain our data are processes with a specific probability distribution, whether those processes are intelligent, intentional, or the results of physical and chemical interactions. The more complex the processes (e.g the forces acting on a spinning, arcing coin), the greater the combinatorial possibilities, and so the the greater the spread of the probability distribution.
And if I say “I met so-and-so by chance yesterday”, in no sense do I mean that either of us was acting in a non-intentional, or non-intelligent manner (though we might have been). All we mean is that we did not predict that our intentions would result in our meeting. What caused that meeting was a highly complex multiplicity of events and processes, many of them intelligent and intentional.
What was chance about our encounter was not its cause but its unpredictability.
How about these thought experiments:
The 500 heads are all that remain of 1013 coins that were tossed. The rest were tails, but they were removed by some (selective) force. What role (if any) did chance play in this?
Now let us imagine that 520 coins are are tossed, the heads are left in place and the tails are tossed again. The re-tossing of tails happens 4 more times and then any renaming tails are removed.What role (if any) did chance play in this? Would you consider 500 heads a fair expectation?
A configuration does not imply a history.
Perhaps this needs to be worked up into a formal statement.
Perhaps the claim that configuration implies history should be called the Dempski fallacy.
DemBski. (I type Dempski all the time too)
Prediction: The probability that Mr. Arrington will address this question on his claim will equal the Universal Probability Bound. 😉
Nice photo of the coin flipping!
Seriously, thanks for the educational post, Lizzie.
What is the probability that a coin flip such as the one shown would be a perfect parabola?
Even more unlikely, what is the probability that plotting the distances divided by the time interval between each image of the coin would produce a straight line going from a minus value, through zero, and ending up at a positive value equal in magnitude to the initial minus value?
Are such regularities evidence of intelligent design?
Barry clearly excluded tossing the coins, so this becomes more of a logical problem than a probability problem.Can any natural force lift all 500 coins from where ever they are and arrange them on a table? Of course not. So the answer is simple – it is not possible by chance.(I mean stochastic system)
Even if you allow tossing the coins, which probability distribution will ensure that all coins tossed end heads up? (assuming either all coins where tossed simultaneously by 500 volunteers or a machine did it).
Richardthughes,
Assuming p =0.5 in a Binomial distribution of coins, if we toss 1013 coins, the probability of getting 500 heads is 0.069 . I would hesitate to say that the arrangement was by chance alone.
Mike Elzinga,
Yes, because to get such a curve, some one has to flip it or some one has to program a machine to flip it at proper angle, so an intelligent agent is involved.
It’s amusing to see the contempt being poured upon the heads of the ‘Darwinist’ commenters for attempting to think like scientists – to consider as many ways as they can for potential causes of the raw data. But no, if you don’t join the ID-er in leaping to the ‘obvious’ conclusion, you are displaying your Darwinist aversion to granting any concession to the ID view. It is, after all obvious, and all who fail to see that are mentally ill.
As we have been given the explicit fact that there was ‘no tossing involved’, the probability distribution of fairly tossed coins is not relevant anyway. An agency turning them heads is one possible cause, but there are several others, and it depends what you call ‘chance’. There’s a bizarre subdivision of causes into ‘chance’ and ‘law’. If I came upon a deposit where fossil trilobites were almost all oriented ‘heads’, would I be justified in invoking Agency to explain their orientation? If a mixture of short D and L-ribose RNA oligomers preferentially hybridises D to D and L to L, is that nonrandom distribution caused by agency?
Welcome, coldcoffee. Sorry that your posts were in moderation for a while. That happens to first time posters, until a moderator notices.
Coffee: perhaps you or Barry could supply some non-flipping scenarios to explain 500 coins on a table. Or some scenario not involving any humans.
I have to assume that this discussion has a point, and the point will be related to the ID hypothesis.
In which case one has to allow evolutionary scenarios as possible explanations.
My old biometry prof’s mantra was “know your rats” (i.e. the biological or other subjects you’re studying). It’s only when you know about how rats behave, what their characteristics are, what is normal about rats that you can properly design experiments about them without bias and properly use stats to find out more about them. Biologists always know as much as possible about the organisms they work on first, and then design tests, models and hypotheses. Barry and Co. are trying to reverse the process by creating a model of reality without understanding much about reality first.
Since coins are a human artefact, presumably we are merely supposed to be interested in them as objects-of-unknown-provenance-with-a-consistent-orientation-despite-equiprobability-per-object? Otherwise it’s always going to be pointless.
One possibility is that a die stamp spat them out that way. Getting them into the middle of the ‘flipping’ probability distribution (which we have been explicitly told did not happen as such) would require some other process – for example someone wanting to make it look as if the coins had been shaken up individually or collectively. Or just dropping them on the floor and replacing them. In this scenario, the unsurprising distribution is the ‘artificial’ one, the one involving agency (assuming we can ignore the agency that made the die stamp – rather pointless if we can’t).
Or statistics, or hypothesis testing. And that goes for Dembski, math and statistic degrees notwithstanding.
Same old same old.
Asserting you can say something about history simply by looking at the shape of something.
Only works in cases where you have a sample of similar objects having a known history.
Right! And it’s important to see, I think, that the entire argument for “intelligent design” rests on this deeply flawed premise — that any explanation must be (i) “chance”; (ii) “necessity”; (iii) “design” — from which it follows that if (i) and (ii) are excluded, then (iii) follows. It’s a classic argument that can be found in Plato — in fact, if memory serves, Plato uses this argument in Timaeus to argue against unnamed positions — and a generation or so later, the Stoics revived this argument and expanded upon it in their criticisms of the Epicureans.
The way that the ID people frame the debate that they want to have with “Darwinists,” it is as if the last two thousands years of science and philosophy didn’t actually happen — it’s still the Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics together versus the Epicureans, just as it was in Greek and Roman philosophy. And their deep-rooted psychological need to cast “Darwinism” in the role of Epicureanism is precisely why they fail to understand Darwin’s theories or contemporary evolutionary theory.
Show your work. Are you calculating the probability that exactly 500 heads will show up in 1,013 flipped coins, or the probability that at least 500 heads will show up in 1,013 flipped coins? After all, if 501 coins came up heads, that’s the 500 heads Arrington specified, plus one extra head more, right?
If “thinking like scientists” means “avoiding the obvious in service of a materialist ideological commitment”, then otay. Meaning, there might well be a non-agency explanation for the coin arrangement, but in the world of sane people, the non-agency explanation is not the go-to explanation, and you really don’t spend a lot of time attempting to find a non-agency answer unless you are committed to there being a non-agency answer in the first place.
It’s like the fine-tuning argument where **any other explanation** is acceptable, as long as deliberate agency is not part of that explanation. Until some non-intelligent agency is demonstrated to be the cause, the *best* explanation for the coin arrangement is ID.
We all know this is true, whether one can admit it or not. Materialists begin with the commitment “ID cannot be true, cannot be the explanation for the coin arrangement” and then as long as any rube-goldberg mechanism of chance/law can **possibly** account for the arrangement (no matter how unlikely), that explanation is taken over the blatantly obvious every time.
This is why you guys get no (and should get no) respect at UD; you deny the obvious, the self-evident and the necessary in order to service your ideology. An ideologically uncommitted scientist would have no trouble admitting that the best explanation for the configuration of the coins is ID (even if later this was shown to be untrue), and then perhaps ask themselves why this is so – what is the quantifiable quality about such configurations that make them obviously the product of deliberate intervention?
At least ID scientists admit such configurations exist and are identifiable and may be quantifiable as such. You guys would rather enter the realm of the absurd and the irrational to avoid even admitting the most trivial cases of ID identification.
Care to name those “ID scientists”?
I’d like to check the blacklist, and add them if they are not already on it.
Setting aside the consideration of how valuable a commodity the respect of people like, say, Barry Arrington, is, your statement is an assertion that is completely unjustified. I think that people’s (I’m talking of TSZ commenters) personal ideologies (I’m presuming you mean political views) seem to vary quite widely. What is common is that we question the glib assertions blithely tossed out by Arrington et al as if it were unquestionably true.
Rubbish. The glibness of the assertion is mind-blowing here. There is no ID explanation. “ID” is an umbella word for politico-religious propaganda. There is no scientific ID.
Hi Cold Coffee!
using excel: [=BINOMDIST(500,1013,0.5,0)], I get 2.3%. This is right up in the ‘most likely outcomes’ part of the curve of probabilities of outcomes (it peaks at 506 and 507 at 2.51%). Remember, some outcome has to happen, even if discrete are improbable (think shuffling 2 packs of cards and the order you get), so why do you find it hard to attribute this outcome to chance?
Alan Fox:
Your comment above is nothing more than emotional and political rhetoric that – to you – justifies your refusal to rationally and reasonably discuss that which threatens your ideology.
Anyone who retreats into the claim that they don’t understand what is meant by “chance” wrt the coins on the table, or claims that they wouldn’t immediately conclude that the coin configuration was best explained as the result of ID, deserves no respect. They’re lying; the only question is if they are lying to themselves, or just to others.
““ID” is an umbella word for politico-religious propaganda. There is no scientific ID[T].” – Alan Fox
As an Abrahamic believer who has seen through IDist ideology, I agree with Alan Fox re: IDT’s propaganda.
(Note: WJM, this doesn’t mean I must therefore agree with Alan Fox’s worldview, which is the common conclusion you draw as a polemical IDist.)
IDists are actually very weak (indeed, almost invisible) when it comes to the actual study of ‘agents.’ It’s all about ‘implicationism’ in the IDM as currently constructed. It’s a crypto-apologetics Movement, based on evangelical and sometimes fundamentalist funding and Protestant church promotion channels.
No, I’m not a ‘materialist,’ WJM. But I do reject IDT on a responsible basis in science, philosophy, theology/worldview dialogue. There are many others who take this position also. You’d see this and begin to understand why if you’d open your eyes and prepare your heart. Will you try?
Neil Rickert,
Neil
Thanks. I understand that it is the standard procedure in most of the forums
petrushka,
petrushka,
May be Barry will elaborate on the reason he raised the issue at Uncommon Descent forum in some future posts of his.
George,
George,
May be Barry is not finished? He may explain further in some future post at Uncommon Descent.
WJM,
and then perhaps ask themselves why this is so – what is the quantifiable quality about such configurations that make them obviously the product of deliberate intervention?
Ok, what quantifiable quality? Do all configurations of deliberate intervention manifest this quality or just the obvious ones?
William J. Murray,
Science is not the exclusion of agency at all costs, but acknowledgement of the fact that there are perfectly possible non-agency explanations that your cohorts seem unwilling even to concede in principle. These must be considered even in such an apparently self-evident and obvious case as an unusual arrangement of coins. The reason you guys get no respect anywhere except at UD is precisely the ideological blindness of which you accuse others – you seem congenitally incapable of approaching an issue from all sides. Having concluded an agency explanation, all efforts are focussed upon dismantling other explanations, to the extent that you understand them. You already know the answer – and you assume that the ‘materialist’ is symmetrically biased in the opposite direction – as if all we are looking for is a non-agency explanation, and don’t care any more about what the explanation actually IS, dusting our hands in satisfaction at the mere exclusion of some version of the Big Fella. All possibilities are up for grabs – including agency. But one needs a reason to prefer that conclusion over some other.
Allan Miller,
Allan,
Yes you are right. The set of 500 coins on table proves that it is not by chance.
cubist,
cubist,
Yes, because this was Richardthughes statement:
Gregory,
That things exist that were/are intelligently designed is a trivial statement of fact (humans do it all the time). That some things that are intelligently designed are qualitatively distinct from most other things we find in the world, which we classify as natural, and that they are different because of intelligent design, is another trivial fact (battleships vs rockslides).
The only meaningful question is whether or not this qualitative, categorical difference in kinds of causation can be quantified solely by examining the artifact in question, and what form such a quantification process would take. Those that deny ID is a fact (humans do it) and can produce qualitatively different kinds of artifacts (battleships vs natural formations) and may at least in theory be open to scientific quantification are themselves, for whatever reason, simply trying to deny ID in service of their ideology.
I cannot have a reasonable debate with those that deny the trivially obvious and reasonable scientific investigations thereof because it conflicts with their ideology or religious/socio-political commitments.
Hi Richardthughes,
I calculated exactly 500 Heads (between 499 – 501) as your statement was :
The 500 heads are all that remain of 1013 coins that were tossed.
May be that was not what you meant? But if only 500 coins are there on table, obviously I can’t calculate it in any other way, and I hope Barry meant that. It gives too low a probability for the coins to arrange by chance alone. Don’t you think 2.3% is low ? Funny that MMA gives different probability than Excel – It gives more generous probability !
You’re trying to force people to adopt your intentional language (which is obviously borrowed from IDM leaders) and we’ve (across a range of worldviews) seen through the reasons why you are doing it and reject it. Simple conclusion, WJM.
“Those that deny ID is a fact…”
The language you use is based on Charles Thaxton’s choice of an engineering analogy for his OoL speculations. As part of the IDM, you seemingly cannot avoid this association.
‘Intelligent Design Theory’ is just that, a ‘theory,’ with particular concept duo ‘intelligence’ + ‘design.’ I don’t recognise the acronym ‘ID’ because it simply tries to reify what the theory, labelled IDT is trying to prove, but has thus far failed.
“to deny ID in service of their ideology.”
WJM, you simply reify IDT in service of your ideology. That’s also a fact. What’s the main difference then between you and your admitted atheist, materialist opponents? You seem to be perfect dancing partners for each other and both as unlikely to make progress (or to achieve ‘victory’) as the other.
For those who go beyond both your and your chosen dancing partners’ polemics, this conversation as you frame it is simply a waste of time.
Flip another coin, why don’t you, and have a trivial laugh.
What does “perfectly” add to the word “possible”? Because something is possible is not the same as it being plausible. It is possible that someone dumped a bag of 500 coins on the table and they all happened to land heads up by chance; as you and your cohorts reiterate, all of them landing heads up is as possible as any other configuration. However, if it actually happened, you and I both know we would immediately assume it was somehow rigged (ID), and then only if we eliminated an reasonable chance that it was rigged would we accept the astounding, amazing conclusion that it happened by chance.
IOW, in a real world scenario, you would have to have it proven that such an event was not the result of ID before you would accept a natural/chance explanation; yet here, in a debate with ID advocates, you posture the exact opposite – that you would have to exclude all natural/chance “possibilities’ before you would conclude ID. And you expect anyone at UD to take you seriously?
If you cannot admit that, we cannot have a honest debate about it. Because something is “possible” doesn’t make it a candidate for current best explanation. IDists admit that the best current explanation for the all-heads configuration is intelligent agency at some point in whatever process configured the heads; you cannot even admit this, instead resorting to the bare “possibility” that there is some non-agency explanation that hasn’t been ruled out.
That you refuse to answer a simple question simply but instead find any “possible” dodge or obfuscation shows that you are indeed bent upon avoiding ID at all costs, even to the point of absurdity and contradicting how you would actually operate in real life outside of ID debates.
Yet ID actually claims to be able to calculate a metric for battleships and rockslides and on the basis of that metric determine which was designed.
Say what now? Who is denying that intelligent designed things can and often are different to natural formations?
No, rather the denial is that ID can quantify the difference. And all ID has to do to show that denial is false is, well, quantify the difference.
No, in fact you cannot have a debate because you really think that you can go from “500 coins on a table” to “therefore ID” and not be laughed at.
And I find it very ironic the trouble you IDists are going to at the moment when faced with the fruits of your own work. No arrangement of coins can ever be random because coins are designed things, right? So when you are asked about how that can be ignored for the purposes of getting to the heart of what you are vainly trying to show that’s considered “denying the trivially obvious because it conflicts with ideology or religious/socio-political commitments” rather then what it actually is – illustrating the vast gulf between what you think you understand and people who actually do understand.
William, don’t you ever wonder why if all the facts, evidence, science etc is on your side that the ID movement seems to be confined to a small blog and a dozen or so people who have been repeating the same points for a couple of decades?
No, because whether or not IDT is true is irrelevant to my ideology. Only those that require X be true reify X as true in service of their ideology. My ideology requires no such “servicing”.
False. Over time they die out and are replaced by a generation less in service to ideology. As their worldview is not based on a reality based view, on average it will fade and not be replaced by anything similar, whereas reality based views will proliferate as the source is always there, always pure.
Do you seriously think that in 1000 years time ID/creationism will exist as anything but a page in a history book?
Another 100 and I’d say it’ll be totally forgotten about, the last gasp of an idea whose time has been and gone already.
Your personal ideology is intimately wrapped up in your propaganda pushes for IDT here at TSZ and at UD. This is too obvious to miss, WJM, especially given your emotive outbursts. Perhaps you just don’t realise this and somehow blame ‘servicing’ on this?
IDT is a theory about UPPERCASE ‘Intelligent Design’. It is improper to speak of ‘ID’ as something that IDT has natural scientifically proven, when it hasn’t.
“humans do it all the time”
There is no ‘humans do it’ version of UPPERCASE ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory.
Drop the concept duo ‘Intelligent Design’ and there’s a ton of ‘design theory’ that IDists haven’t even begun to study. They are as agent-empty as the ‘materialists’ you are criticising, WJM. And I know this from speaking with them personally, corresponding with IDM leaders and attending their classes undercover. You’re promoting a figment of your imagination, not even a remotely legitimate ‘natural scientific theory’ as the DI-IDM claim foolheartedly.
The point of coin flipping is trivial stochastic diversion. IDT avoids studying agents by fiat. It’s a sheer implicationist ideology dependent on right-wing conservative evangelical funding, WJM, even if that doesn’t fit your personal profile.
And we can all see how productive your ideology has been, two books you disown and a couple of years fighting on the wrong side of the culture war…
Then I suggest you quit wasting your time, seeing as you are above and beyond both sides of the argument.
Stop fighting. There’s an alternative way forward that non-extremists (and it is unclear how many either at UD or TSZ would qualify) can *ALL* accept.
You’d have to know the purpose of my ideology before you can possibly pass any judgement on how productive it has been. My ideology has served its purpose beyond my wildest expectations, so much so that I don’t even bother trying to make it any better. If I run into any problems, then I’ll look into it. For the past 15-20 years, though, it’s been highly productive.
Gregory,
Stop fighting. There’s an alternative way forward that non-extremists (and it is unclear how many either at UD or TSZ would qualify) can *ALL* accept.
Please explain
Of course! The problem is that people completely invested in the U.S. culture war don’t want to stop fighting — they want to win.
I don’t know how many non-extremists there are at TSZ, though I’d like to consider myself one of them. The non-extremists at UD seem to have been driven away by the extremists. “He shouts loudest, shouts last” seems to be the motto of all Internet-based discussions. Just look at the comments section on almost any major news item, and prepare to lose your faith in reasonable dialogue.
Then it’s just a shame you cannot generate the sort of tangible results in ID using your ideology as you’ve obviously done for whatever aspects of your life you are talking about here.
What is it about ID I wonder that makes people involved in it unable to be productive.
It’s not a fight, have you not got that yet? It’s leaning down to the fighter on the floor and telling them they’ve been knocked out, they’ve lost, it’s all over. The war is finished and they lost.
For some reason they keep wanting to try and get back up, trying the same failed moves over and over, thinking that this time it’ll work.
Time for IDC to bury itself under the big tent. I mean, look at William – he’s ideology has served his purpose beyond his wildest expectations and even he can’t make ID show any signs of life! That parrot is dead!
Where did Barry say “by chance alone”? I am not seeing the “alone” part.
coldcoffee,
Hi Cold Coffee.
This tool:
http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx
Agrees with my number when using 0.5, 1013 and 500 in the first 3 fields.
“Don’t you think 2.3% is low ? ”
Great question. Short version, no! there are 1014 possible configurations (from all tails to all heads) – if the probability distribution was uniform this would be about 0.10% per discrete outcome. So its 23 times more than that, and not so very far off the most likely outcome. The coins must take *some* configuration. Don’t fall for the small numbers fallacy!
And it’s Mindpowers Murray and his big-boy pants!
*Hugs*
How’ve ya been?