My problem with the IDists’ 500 coins question (if you saw 500 coins lying heads up, would you reject the hypothesis that they were fair coins, and had been fairly tossed?) is not that there is anything wrong with concluding that they were not. Indeed, faced with just 50 coins lying heads up, I’d reject that hypothesis with a great deal of confidence.
It’s the inference from that answer of mine is that if, as a “Darwinist” I am prepared to accept that a pattern can be indicative of something other than “chance” (exemplified by a fairly tossed fair coin) then I must logically also sign on to the idea that an Intelligent Agent (as the alternative to “Chance”) must inferrable from such a pattern.
This, I suggest, is profoundly fallacious.
First of all, it assumes that “Chance” is the “null hypothesis” here. It isn’t. Sure, the null hypothesis (fair coins, fairly tossed) is rejected, and, sure, the hypothesized process (fair coins, fairly tossed) is a stochastic process – in other words, the result of any one toss is unknowable before hand (by definition, otherwise it wouldn’t be “fair”), and both the outcome sequence of 500 tosses and the proportion of heads in the outcome sequence is also unknown. What we do know, however, because of the properties of the fair-coin-fairly-tossed process, is the probability distribution, not only of the proportions of heads that the outcome sequence will have, but also of the distribution of runs-of-heads (or tails, but to keep things simple, I’ll stick with heads).
And in fact, I simulated a series of 100,000 such runs (I didn’t go up to the canonical 2^500 runs, for obvious reasons), using MatLab, and here is the outcome:
As you can see from the top plot, the distribution is a beautiful bell curve, and in none of the 100,000 runs do I get anything near even as low as 40% Heads or higher than 60% Heads.
Moreover, I also plotted the average length of runs-of-heads – the average is just over 2.5, and the maximum is less than 10, and the frequency distribution is a lovely descending curve (lower plot).
If therefore, I were to be shown a sequence of 500 Heads and Tails, in which the proportion of Heads was:
- less than, say 40%, OR
- greater than, say 60%, OR
- the average length runs-of-heads was a lot more than 2.5, OR
- the distribution of the proportions was not a nice bell curve, OR
- the distribution of the lengths of runs-of-heads was not a nice descending Poisson like the one in lower plot,
I would also reject the null hypothesis that the process that generated the sequence was “fair coins, fairly tossed”. For example:
This was another simulation. As you can see, the bell curve is pretty well identical to the first, and the proportions of heads are just as we’d expect from fair coins, fairly tossed – but can we conclude it was the result of “fair coins, fairly tossed”? Well, no. Because look at the lower plot – the mean length of runs of heads is 2.5, as before, but the distribution is very odd. There are no runs of heads longer than 5, and all lengths are of pretty well equal frequency. Here is one of these runs, where 1 stands for Heads and 0 stands for tails:
1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
Would you detect, on looking at it, that it was not the result of “fair coins fairly tossed”? I’d say at first glance, it all looks pretty reasonable. Nor does it conform to any fancy number, like pi in binary. I defy anyone to find a pattern in that run. The reason I so defy you is that it was actually generated by a random process. I had no idea what the sequence was going to be before it was generated, and I’d generated another 99,999 of them before the loop finished. It is the result of a stochastic process, just as the first set were, but this time, the process was different. For this series, instead of randomly choosing the next outcome from an equiprobable “Heads” or “Tails” I randomly selected the length the next run of each toss-type from the values 1 to 5, with an equal probability of each length. So I might get 3 Heads, 2 Tails, 5 Heads, 1 Tail, etc. This means that I got far more runs of 5 Heads than I did the first time, but far fewer (infinitely fewer in fact!) runs of 6 Heads! So ironically, the lack of very long runs of Heads is the very clue that tells you that this series is not the result of the process “fair coins, fairly coins”.
But it IS a “chance” process, in the sense that no intelligent agent is doing the selecting, although in intelligent agent is designing the process itself – but then that is also true of the coin toss.
Now, how about this one?
Prizes for spotting the stochastic process that generated the series!
The serious point here is that by rejecting a the null of a specific stochastic process (fair coins, fairly tossed) we are a) NOT rejecting “chance” (because there are a vast number of possible stochastic processes). “Chance” is not the null; “fair coins, fairly tossed” is.
However, the second fallacy in the “500 coins” story, is that not only are we not rejecting “chance” when we reject “fair coins, fairly tossed”) but nor are we rejecting the only alternative to “Intelligently designed”. We are simply rejecting one specific stochastic process. Many natural processes are stochastic, and the outcomes of some have bell-curve probability distributions, and of others poisson distributions, but still others, neither. For example many natural stochastic processes are homeostatic – the more extreme some parameter becomes, the more likely is the next state to be closer to the mean.
The third fallacy is that there is something magical about “500 bits”. There isn’t. Sure if a p value for data under some null is less than 2^-500 we can reject that null, but if physicists are happy with 5 sigma, so am I, and 5 sigma is only about 2^-23 IIRC (it’s too small for my computer to calculate).
And fourthly, the 500 bits is a phantom anyway. Seth Lloyd computed it as the information capacity of the observable universe, which isn’t the same as the number of possible times you can toss a coin, and in any case, why limit what can happen to the “observable universe”? Do IDers really think that we just happen to be at the dead centre of all that exists? Are they covert geocentrists?
Lastly, I repeat: chance is not a cause. Sure we can use the word informally as in “it was just one of those chance things….” or even “we retained the null, and so can attribute the observed apparent effects to chance…” but only informally, and in those circumstances, “chance” is a stand-in for “things we could not know and did not plan”. If we actually want to falsify some null hypothesis, we need to be far more specific – if we are proposing some stochastic process, we need to put specific parameters on that process, and even then, chance is not the bit that is doing the causing – chance is the part we don’t know, just as I didn’t know when I ran my MatLab script what the outcome of any run would be. The part I DID know was the probability distribution – because I specified the process. When a coin is tossed, it does not fall Heads because of “chance”, but because the toss in question was one that led, by a process of Newtonian mechanics, to the outcome “Heads”. What was “chance” about it is that the tosser didn’t know which, of all possible toss-types, she’d picked. So the selection process was blind, just as mine is in all the above examples.
In other words it was non-intentional. That doesn’t mean it was not designed by an intelligent agent, but nor does it mean that it was.
And if I now choose one of those “chance” coin-toss sequences my script generated, and copy-paste it below, then it isn’t a “chance” sequence any more, is it? Not unless Microsoft has messed up (Heads=”true”, Tails=”false”):
true false true false false false false true true false true true false true true true false true false true true true true true false true false false false true true true true true true true true true false false false true true false true true false false false true false false true true false false false true false true false true true true true true true false false true false true true true true true true false true true true false true false false false false false false false false false false false false false false true false false true false true true true false true true true false true true false false true true true true true false true false true false false true true false true true true true true true true false false true false false true false false true true false true true true true false false true false false false false true false false true true false false true false true true false true false true true true true true true true true true true true true true false true false false true false false false true false false true true true false false true true true false true true true false false false true false true false false true false true false true true false true false true false true false false true true true false true true false false false false true false false true false true true true true true false true true true false false false true false true false true true true false false false false false false false true true false true false true false true true false false false true false true true false true false true true true true false true false false false false true false true true true true false false true false true true true true false true true false false true false true false true true true true true false false false true true true false false false true true true false true false true true true true true true true false false true false true false false true true true false true false true true false false true true true false true true false false false true false false false false true false false true true true true false false true false false true true true true false true false false true false true true false false true true false false true true false true false true true false false false false false false false true false true true false false false true true true false false false true false true false false false true true false true false true true true true false true false false false true false true true true false false false false true false true true false true true true false true true false true false false true false true false true true false false true false true false true false false true true false false
I specified it. But you can’t tell that by looking. You have to ask me.
ETA: if you double click on the images you get a clear version.
ETA2: Here’s another one – any guesses as to the process (again entirely stochastic)? Would you reject the null of “fair coins, fairly tossed”?
Here’s a sample run:
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
Barry? Sal? William?
ETA3: And here’s another version:
The top plot is the distribution of proportions of Heads.
The second plot is the distribution of runs of Heads
The bottom two plots represent two runs; blue bars represent Heads.
What is the algorithm? Again, it’s completely stochastic.
And one final one:
which I think is pretty awesome! Check out that bimodality!
Homochirality here we come!!!
Well, yes, but when have UDers ever forgone an attempt to have it both ways?
If you point out that trivial examples often illustrate more complex points which can’t be taken for granted, they accuse you of “obfuscation-by-minutiae, mischaracterization, concept-bluffing”. If you simply respond to the question taken at face value, then they pounce with the gotcha that DDS is blinding you to the (obvious) Interior-Decorator-didit implications.
Cue their temper tantrums at being politely informed that one cannot have it both ways …
Points at Liz trying to sneak in the new qualifier “specifiably complex configuration” as if it is the same thing as “specified”. Reminds neutral viewers that all complex configurations are specifiable; not all are already specified. That’s the difference between hitting a bullseye, and drawing the bullseye after you shoot.
Points at Liz adding these qualifiers as if they are part of her original, absurd insistence that ID advocates claim all order is the product of ID. Asks neutral viewrs – for what end?
Points at Liz ignoring my prior point about Barry’s point being that certain ordered configurations are obviously not the result of what we would reasonably or plausibly call “chance” mechanisms/distributions – regardless of the mechanism that delivered the coins to the table (hence, “no tossing involved”).
Points at Liz implying that given coins with 2 heads, a distribution of “all heads up” for 500 coins on a table could be considered the result of a system properly characterized as “chance”.
Points at Liz implying that is appropriate to consider a conveyor belt that lays 500 heads-up coins onto a table a mechanism, wrt to the “heads up” nature of the configured coins, properly categorized as “chance”.
Laughs.
No, Liz. It doesn’t matter how the coins got onto the table. It doesn’t matter what system or mechanism put them there; that system or mechanism cannot plausibly be characterized as “chance”, no matter how you try to duck, weave and obfuscate.
Only a devout, hysterical anti-ID nutcase starts dismantling the meaning of “chance”, “chance hypothesis” and “chance explanation” or starts talking about magnets to avoid simply admitting that chance is not a plausible category of explanation for the configuration of the coins, and that ID (as a category) is required (to the best of our current understanding because there is no known natural law that would necessitate it), and that there are other things that similarly require ID (category) as a part of the explanation because chance and natural law are entirely insufficient as causal categories, and because we know ID produces such results trivially.
William: Barry put, in brackets “(no tossing involved)”. It seemed abundantly clear that readers were to say how whether they would reject the “chance” explanation as to how the coins got there from the configuration of coins (500, all head up), not from having not from being told by Barry that they had not been tossed.
I see nothing “explicitly false” about this reading of Barry’s post.
But clearly, if Barry told me that coins lying on a table had not been tossed, I would reject the hypothesis that they had been tossed, whether they were arranged all heads up or a complete mixture of heads and tails.
Unless of course I had reason to think that Barry was lying, which I don’t.
If you think he meant the latter, then my answer is clear. But in that case, what on earth do you think the point of Barry’s question?
As a reminder, it was:
Note that Barry says “if you came across…” which suggest you just encountered this table. He informs us that 500 coins are lying there, heads up, and that they had been “set” with “no tossing involved”. However, the finder finds them as is, and does not, it seems to me, know how they came to be there. The exercise, it seems to me, is to say whether we would reject chance as the hypothesis.
Do you really think that we are to assume that we know that they have not been tossed when we are asked to reject “chance”?
What do you think we are supposed to be rejecting here?
I see neither WJM nor phoodoo could bring themselves to answer this question. Not really surprising.
Let’s try another relevant one and see if they step up.
Science pop quiz time!
Which of the following best describes biological evolution?
a). A purely random process
b) A process with a random component that also involves selection driven feedback.
Go ahead, use Google-fu if you have to.
Liz:
We know they are not tossed as soon as we see them.
The point of excluding the “tossing”, IMO, is to drive the point home that without knowing how a particular arrangement of matter came to be configured the way it is, we can still discern – in some cases – that intentionality (as a category) was required for it to come to that configuration. We don’t have to know that the coins were tossed to reasonably conclude that ID is necessary to the explanation. We don’t have to know how the coins got there to exclude chance & necessity categories as a sufficient explanation.
Points and laughs at WJM.
Reminds neutral views that “drawing a bullseye after you shoot” is exactly what ID does for their main argument. They waited until after science had mapped the DNA sequences that create proteins, then claim the mapping as a before specification.
Just another reason why science doesn’t take their huge logical blunders seriously
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/june9/diaconis-69.html
“To make his point, Diaconis commissioned a team of Harvard technicians to build a mechanical coin tosser — a 3-pound, 15-inch-wide contraption that, when bolted to a table, launches a coin into the air such that it lands the same way every single time. Diaconis himself has trained his thumb to flip a coin and make it come up heads 10 out of 10 times. But what he really wanted to know was whether unrehearsed tosses — by ordinary folk who flip coins with unpredictable speeds and heights and catch them at different angles — would show that the outcome of the act was, in fact, random.”
Points and laughs at another of WJM’s huge logic blunders.
There are other chance ways besides fair tossing that the coins could have ended up in that arrangement. At least half a dozen were presented that involve no Intelligent Designer intentionality whatsoever.
Another big FAIL for ID!
I am attempting to “sneak in” nothing, William. Dembski’s argument is that a pattern that is BOTH “specified” and “complex” can only be the product of design.
You seem to have missed Dembski’s point about the “difference between hitting a bullseye, and drawing the bullseye after you shoot. Dembski’s quite clever idea was to say that we can define a specification after we find the pattern in terms of its “ease of description”. Of course all complex configurations are “specifiable” in advance – the issue is whether there are configurations that we can regard as specifiable post hoc, for instance as “the digits of pi in binary” or “the ascii code for Genesis”. Dembski argues that patterns with simple descriptions are rarer than patterns with complex description, and so a pattern that is both “complex” (has many bits) and “specified” (can be described simply) carries the signature of design. What did you think he was saying?
I know not all ID advocates do not. I have even read articles that say that “mere” order is not the same as specified complexity. However, I have read no description of specified complexity that would exclude an easily described pattern such as HTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT. It might exclude all heads, in fact, if the all heads arrangement did not reveal that tails were possible (because Shannon Complexity is usually based on the frequencies of symbols in the candidate message).
I’m happy to consider this point, William, if you will elaborate on it. Why should certain ordered configurations obviously not be the result of what we would reasonably call “chance”? What criteria would you use to decide? To be honest I’m find it hard to parse your post here. Can you give an example of a configuration of something that is obviously not the result of chance, when we don’t actually know how the pattern was configured?
Technically, certainly it could. But I agree that in this context it is highly unlikely. However, if we want to draw any general lesson from the example (and why else would Barry present it?) there are often many many “chance” systems that will result in something other than approximately 50:50 A:B, with high probability. My last two examples are such.
If you find my example silly, feel free to ignore it. My point does not depend on it. I notice that you entirely ignore my actual point which is that if we extrapolate from the artificial coins example to a real example, e.g. homochirality, now we really do have to consider many non-intentional processes other than some binomial process, and such processes abound in both the non-living and living world.
OK, fine. And please re-read the site rules, William. You are violating them with your repeated characterisations of my motives as “duck, weave and obfuscate”. My meaning may obscure to you (actually, clearly it is) but that does not mean I am not doing my darnedest to make myself clear. As I’ve said, countless times, I would consider that an Intelligent Coin Layer was the most likely explanation for 500 heads-up coins on a table, whether or not I knew they had not been tossed. Indeed, I’d consider it overwhelmingly likely if I found 50. Please stop suggesting that I am attempting to “duck” this conclusion. I’ve made it, explicitly, right from the start.
I’m sorry William, but this is simply untrue. Any scientist (and I am one) and certainly anyone who understands statistical methodology (and I do) would “dismantle” the meaning of chance in this example. Indeed, one of the most important things we have to do when designing experiments, analysing data, and indeed, reviewing or evaluating other people’s experiments, is to check that the null has been correctly formulated, and that, if it has been rejected, that the null that was formulated is the one that the scientist think they rejected. Too often, this is not the case, and the wrong null is incorrectly posed.
ID claims to be rigorous science. Dembski frequently talks about putting ID on a rigorous mathematical footing. Rigor requires precise operational definitions of constructs. If you want to reject a null, you cannot merely characterise it as “chance” because there are a vast numbers of “chance” processes where “chance processes” include the “set of known non-intentional processes” to use your phrase, then there are unknown ones as well. Some of these will produce outcomes similar to the outcomes of coin-tossing; others will produce quite different outcomes, some of which will have intricate patterns.
And so you cannot simply look at a pattern and say “that was not produced by chance” simply because it cannot have been produced by one particular “chance” process. In the case of coins on a table, it may be that the most likely non-binomial process was Intelligent Coin-laying. But in the case of molecules, that is simply not the case.
To be fair, no they don’t. William Dembski specifically addresses this point, and, quite interestingly, comes up with a category of pattern that will tend to be rare in a set of all possible configurations, namely one that is “easy to describe”. That’s the basis of his argument in Specification: the Pattern that Signifies Intelligence.
It’s quite neat as a definition, but it doesn’t work as a design-detector, because, as I said, it doesn’t exclude patterns like HTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT, which are common in nature.
He gets round it by saying we have to exclude the relevant chance hypothesis for such a target – but does not say how we formulate such a thing.
In other words it all comes back to specifying the right chance hypothesis, and if you can’t, ID, or at least the CSI bits, fail.
It still leaves Irreducible Complexity (but that suffers from related problems), the Cambrian Explosion (which suffers from its own) and Perry Marshall/Upright Biped.
Dembski was trying to put the cart before the horse. Usually, by the time a scientific theory is put on a firm mathematical footing it is already fully developed by scientists. Mathematicians are always late to the party.
Of course they do. It’s the whole basis of their “complex specified information” nonsense. They try to duck the problem by claiming the specification “does something” (i.e. is functional) which is how they differentiate it from other naturally occurring non-biological complex structures with after-the-fact specifications. It’s still the Sharpshooter fallacy no matter how much they spin it.
Interestingly, I took Barry to mean that we found the coins laid out heads up and to add emphasis for his point, he noted that we had not seen the coins tossed (no tossing involved), not that he was stating that we knew they had not been tossed.
I disagree, thorton. I don’t think the problem lies in the principle of carving out a subset of possible configurations that are “special” without specifying them in advance. And the classic example they give, of a signal from space that was found to consist of the prime numbers in ascending order, in digital, would, it seems to me, be strong indication that the sender was an intelligent agent. Thus far, the ID project is reasonable.
I see nothing wrong in principle, with discerning an intelligent source for a given signal.
The fallacies come in when they try to infer design by rejecting a totally inadequate null.
Liz,
Nothing stops it from happening, just as nothing stops you from flipping 500 heads in a row. Nothing stops those waves from pushing pebbles up onto the beach to spell out “There Is No Such Thing As A Chance Hypothesis!”
The question isn’t if anything stops the second from occurring, but rather if it is a plausible comparison to, or extension from, the first.
What an odd response, William. So you think that those beautifully sorted pebbles were as unlikely as an arrangement that spelled “There Is No Such Thing As A Chance Hypothesis!” Because I disagree. I can think of a number of non-intentional mechanisms that would bring about the former, but not the latter, even if I don’t know precisely what they were.
Both are examples of patterns that are extremely unlikely given the null of “some stochastic process that makes any one arrangement as likely as any other arrangement”. Both are highly specified (by Dembski’s definition). And yet you are happy to accept non-design as the explanation for my beach (I think) but not for sorted proteins. What is your reasoning?
In principle I agree. But even in your SETI example above you are matching the unknown signal with an already known and agreed upon “significant” pattern.
What the IDers claim is that the “specification” of the protein is significant all by itself without matching any previously known significant pattern. They use the after-the-fact description and call it a specification when in fact nothing has been pre-specified or matched. They paint the bulls-eye around the bullet hole.
Then tell us why it’s not a plausible comparison.
Both are selection driven feedback processes that produce patters which would be extremely improbable through pure random chance.
Why does the first work but not the second?
No, I’m not. Nobody (in my example) prearranged the signal. It could have been something quite different. But certain patterns, for instance some interesting mathematical sequence in binary, would indicate someone trying to tell us something, while others would not.
No, I don’t think they are doing anything different in principle, in that regard, from the SETI thing – both are after-the-fact perceptions of a pattern.
And if some stretch of DNA was found to have the prime number sequence in base four, I’d be pretty impressed by the argument that some intelligent genetic engineer had diddled with the genome.
The problem isn’t the post hoc specification, IMO – it’s the lack of an appropriate null. A prime number sequence in DNA, or radio signal, would be extremely difficult to explain by non-intelligent mechanisms. Functional proteins are explained very nicely by Darwinian mechanisms.
No, I’m not.
Why are William’s comments not put into moderation before posting them here, given his repeatedly breaking the rules by his repeatedly finding yet another way to say that you’re lying?
Because I tend to err on the non-active side when the pokes are directed at me. If another admin would like to move them, that’s fine.
Correct.
As Lizzie repeats, they have no idea how to compute the relevant chance hypothesis. So if they happen to be correct that the Interior Decorator specified protein sequences – who knows? maybe it did – then they deserve absolutely no credit for their shot in the dark. They didn’t do any work to deserve any credit. They simply are incapable of doing the work.
But even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. Who knows. Maybe they found one.
Hmm, reading further down the thread, I see that I am (partly) disagreeing with Lizzie. I think the point thornton makes is that any protein sequence is claimed as specified by IDers (because homochirality/500 bits, etc) and therefore evidence for Interior Decoration, but that’s no different from claiming that any radio sequence is specified and therefore evidence for ETs. The reason why SETI might work, if it ever does, is that it might notice a signal which is the result of intention It would be easier for us to notice if they constructed a signal of the digits of pi, but we don’t have to hold ET to that level of specification to find a justifiable balance between dismissing all signals as “random noise” and credulously accepting any signal whatsoever as proof that they exist. Similarly, we don’t have to hold the IDists to the level of this genome brought to you by the Lord your God spelled out in DNA bases … but neither should we blindly believe that any “random DNA sequence” merely existing in a cell is proof that the Decorator did it.
When IDist make analogies to recognizing the presence of design as in forensics, archeology, or SETI, they’re just not comparing apples to oranges, they’re comparing pyramids to oranges.
I see Lizzie as giving them far too much credit given the unsound basis of their claims.
I wasn’t referencing Dembski.
Crop circles.
Where is this? Can you provide a quote?
Sure you can. Stonehenge, crop circles. The equivalent of a skyscraper or functioning battleship found on an otherwise desolate planet. The Easter Island statues. An accurate scale representation of the planets in the solar system and their moons carved on rock buried in 10 million-year-old strata.
You can say “that was not produced by chance” not because you have a formal way of “falsifying all the the null chance-hypothesis”, so to speak, but rather because you know without any rigorous methodology that the thing in question must have been designed by some form of intentional intelligence.
ID is about formalizing that particular pattern recognition.
If you looked at a group of molecules and they spelled out “Hi, Liz! Whatcha lookin’ at? Maybe some molecules that can only be explained via ID?”, would it be the case that without knowing how it was done, or why, or who did it, or what their motive was, you could reject the “chance hypothesis” and conclude that ID was the better category of explanation?
SETI isn’t looking for message or for information. It’s looking for a pure unmodulated carrier.
Well, I was, which I would have thought would be obvious to an ID supporter. In any case, it would have been more within the rules of this board to ask me what I did mean, rather than assume I was trying to “sneak” something into the conversation for the purposes of obfuscation.
OK. So can you unpack your criteria? When does a crop circle become obviously designed, and what features make it so? And how does that relate to Barry’s 500 Heads?
Try No Free Lunch, or any article by Dembski. But if IDists don’t want to be rigorous, fine. But then they shouldn’t whine when their papers get rejected from peer-reviewed journals.
Cool. And what is it that unites those things? What principle do you abstract that you can apply to, say, a protein coding sequence in the DNA of an organism? (Note, William, that I am not among those who claim that we cannot infer a designer without knowing the mechanism of the design, or the nature of the designer – just in case you were making that assumption).
Right.
Right. And that is what I am asking you to do. What is the formalisation of your pattern recognition criteria?
As I keep saying, I find “reject the chance hypothesis” too vague to be any use. I would certainly test various nulls, based on the relevant chemistry and physics. And if those were rejected (in other words the molecules were very unlikely to have has any cause in physics and chemistry, or feedback process, that would make such a configuraton likely) I would probably conclude that the message was sent by an intelligent agent, to me, personally (or possibly the Queen). And I would try to find out who sent it, by testing various hypotheses regarding the mechanism of the message formation, which should lead me to some clues as to the likely sender.
As I keep saying, William, I think detecting an intelligent and intentional agent behind a pattern is perfectly possible, if not foolproof. I have no problem in principle with the idea of trying to detect design. My problem with ID is with the specific arguments advanced. All those I have seen I find fallacious.
But find me a bit of DNA with some kind of clear message encoded in it, where that sequence has no apparent phenotypic effect that might account for it, or even if it did, if the message seemed completely orthogonal to the effect, and I’ll start conceding that a designer was involved. As future geneticists will conclude when they find genomes that betray the fingerprints of 21st century genetic engineers.
I know. My example was entirely hypothetical.
The reason we don’t have to look to some external intentional agent to account for functional protein sequences is because functional protein sequences are found in reproducing organisms, have phenotypic effects and are therefore selectable!
This is the whole frigging point. We have, to hand, a truly excellent mechanism for concentrating features that contribute to the persistence of the pattern within the pattern itself, when that pattern self-reproduces.
In the absence of any evidence that an object reproduces, we would be short of a viable explanation for its complex self-persistence-promoting machinery. But if it does, we have a perfectly good account. That’s the essence of Monod’s teleonomy – things that persist are configured in such a way that they persist, because things that aren’t don’t persist! And anything that contributes to that persistence will tend to be found more frequently! So hard rocks will be found more often than soft, and successful self-reproducers more frequently than less successful ones.
There is a built in bias in the world in favour of persisters, for the simple reason that non-persisters don’t persist!
You and I definitely agree on this.
If the IDists don’t want to be rigorous, but only want to be “right”, fine, let ’em. But then they can’t get the un-rigorous crap published in respectable journals (at least not without editorial misconduct) and they can’t legally teach their unscientific crap in US public schools as “science”. Fine with me.
Or they could, they know, do the work necessary to put their design intuition on a scientific footing that makes specific predictions, with clearly explained criteria, testable by anyone using the same explicated mathematical models in new cases. But they either can’t, or won’t, do the work. Or just haven’t gotten around to it yet — new year, fresh start? I doubt it but who knows.
So far all we’ve been told is: “it looks designed, it’s obvious, why do I have to spell it out, can’t you see!”.
Pyramids and oranges …
What difference does it make? I gave you the example you were looking for – something you can tell is not “by chance” without knowing what created it or how.
There are configurations of matter that we know are not the result of the category “chance” and or “necessity” and that we know (as much as we know anything) was generated by some form of intentional agency.
Why don’t you do it?
Points. Laughs. What utter bullshit. You would know immediately that the cause was an intelligent agent, and you’d probably even guess at the motive. Your assertion:
is laughable, horribly, monumentally, demonstrable, obviously so wrong that it begs belief that you uttered it and then refused to retract it. It doesn’t matter what the “material” is, there can always be arrangements of that material that are immediately knowable as not being produced by any assembly of chance/necessity categorical explanations. It doesn’t matter if it is molecules, mud, sand, pebbles, pixels or smoke.
Not being able to admit that a molecular message writ in English and addressed to you of that length is immediately – without any further testing or formal null rejection – recognizable as the product of ID demonstrates that you are fanatically, hysterically anti-ID.
Again, rubbish! You would not know how intelligent an agent was unless you were prepared to submit some definition for intelligence as a quantifiable property of agents. And then we need to distinguish between real agents and imaginary agents.
It makes a huge difference. If you can’t lay down your criteria, then you have no objective way of making your decision.
And what do those configurations have in common other than “they look designed to me”?
It isn’t bullshit at all, as those Jesuses in cheese sandwiches tell you. The trouble with your example is that it is without any realistic context – what molecules? What scale? What’s the substrate? These things matter.
It matters hugely. The fact that you find this absurd is certainly a problem, and it relates to Mike Elzinga’s point about IDists not knowing how to scale up molecular level forces.
I’m sorry, but I disagree. I think it demonstrates how little you know about either scientific methodology or chemistry.
It’s amusing. Without the requisite math, CSI, FCSI, dFSCI, FIASCO, etc are all just proxies for ‘looks designed (to me)’. All science so far!
IOW,
Unless I can formally show to your satisfaction, via some statistical analysis of probabilistic outcomes of the relevant physics/chemistry, that something we all know to be true (as certainly as we know anything to be true) is not plausibly generated by that chemistry, you will deny that the best explanation for that molecular message is (the category) intentional, intelligent design?
IOW, Liz would not accept at face value that a string of molecules was intelligently designed even if they spelled out: “Hi, Liz! Whatcha lookin’ at? Maybe some molecules that can only be explained via ID?”
I invite any onlooker that is remotely objective/neutral to seriously think about this.
Liz, are you reacting to the particular arrangement of molecules in your viewscreen/monitor right now as if they were generated by an intelligent agency? Have you run all of the pertinent probability factors in the pertinent chemistry/physics to reject the null – that these strings of molecules that spell out sentences apparently addressed to you and pertinent to a subject you are interested in – were generated by a class of causes colloquially characterized as “chance”?
RichardHughes & Liz,
Do you believe that the configuration of molecules you are looking at right now are best explained as being the product of an unseen intelligent agency? If so, will you please justify that view by providing your worksheets – where you ran the statistical analysis of the relevant physics and chemistry?
If it is something we “all know to be true”, no, we don’t. But as you were very unspecific in your description of the scenario, I wasn’t going to commit myself to considering it obvious. I’ve seen enough extraordinary patterns in my life to be aware that our own capacity for seeing significance in non-significant arrangements is rather high. However, I more than happily (as I’ve said, to you, several times) to infer design as the most likely explanation if it seems the most likely explanation. What I want to know is how you set about actually formalising that into something you can apply to a pattern of molecules that is part of an reproducing organism and gives rise to a protein that helps the organism reproduce.
It’s possible.
William, I have to say again, that it is your lack of understanding of how scientific methodology works that is feeding your astonishment here. Your artificial examples lack enough detail or realism to enable anyone to make any realistic judgement as to how they would react – but yes, as I’ve said (yet again), if some molecule spelled out a clear sensible English sentence, my first hypothesis would be that some human being had configured it.
Of course.
If you are interested in how hypothesis testing works, William, I have a half-written post that I may finish in the next day or so. But suffice it to say you are confusing null hypothesis testing with Bayesian inference. All a null hypothesis test does is tell you how likely you are to see data as or more extreme (e.g. extremely meaningful) as you observed if your null is true. It doesn’t tell you whether your null, or your alternative, or some other alternative, is the most likely.
Bayesian inference does – but it depends on a lot more than your immediate data, and includes estimates your prior evidence for your hypothesis. Clearly, because I know humans exist, being one and all, an English-speaking human being is highly likely explanation for an English sentence written in molecules. But were I to find it in the DNA of an ancient ant trapped in amber, my priors would be way lower, and almost any other explanation would present itself with greater force.
William, I know that my monitor was designed. Monitors are not alive and do not experience natural selection and reproduction like life. But it seems you’re accepting there is no mathematical underpinning to ID, only “it looks designed to me’.
What is your evidence that seeing design in biological life is something “we all know to be true”?
I understand you think you’re the smartest person on Earth and can speak for everyone but the rest of us need more than your ignorant layman’s personal incredulity.
What objective tests can you offer to guard against your “looks designed to me!” detector giving you false positives?
Liz claims that If Liz found a configuration of molecules that said “Hi, Liz! Whatcha lookin’ at? Maybe some molecules that can only be explained via ID?”, she would have to test some clearly defined nulls (wrt the specific chemistry and physics in question) in order exclude “chance explanations” to reach the conclusion that the molecular configuration was indeed the result of an intelligent agency.
Anyone here want to bet on whether or not she ran those null hypothesis tests the first time she saw that configuration of molecules on her viewscreen?
She never said that, not even close. She even went out her way to explain the ignorant layman’s mistakes you keep makling about null hypothesis testing. There’s a word for people who deliberately keep making up false tales about others.
Now what objective tests can you offer to guard against your “looks designed to me!” detector giving you false positives?
Thorton & Richard,
You are under the mistaken assumption that I am making an argument about biology. I am not. I am showcasing a fact. That fact is that anti-ID advocates are so fanatical and hysterical that they cannot even admit that some configurations of matter are so blatantly the product of intelligent design that no formal calculations or additional information is necessary; to reject them as obviously the product of ID for any reason whatsoever (“You haven’t defined intelligence! Design isn’t a cause! You are misusing the term “chance”! Molecules aren’t like that! You’re not educated enough to understand! You haven’t identified the designer! You haven’t described the fabrication process! Blah. Blah. Blah.) is to embrace the absurd for no reason other than to deny ID by any and all means necessary.
I appreciate your ongoing assistance in making this point quite apparent.
Oh dear William – that’s not how ID works at all. It seems you’re just as ignorant of that which you defend as you are with biology:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_explfilter.htm
Another blatant falsehood as Lizzie just told you she would attribute written English words to an English speaking human. Also in your particular scenario additional information IS required – previous knowledge of the English language – to pattern match against.
If your point is to piss away any remaining shred of intellectual honesty you may have once had you’re succeeding admirably.
WJM asked:
Liz responded:
WJM paraphrased the response:
Thornton says:
I’ll let any available reasonably neutral viewers decide for themselves.
Whatever it takes for your ego to “win”, eh?
Why did you cut out the first and last parts of her answer that provide the context? Not very honest of you now is it.
William J. Murray said this:
ID supporters claim (endlessly) that intelligent design is present in objects that can demonstrably be generated by natural processes, and then proceed to use woolly definitions and unworkable pseudo-mathematics as their mode of argument. I’m unsurprised that many commenters on this site would refuse to accept an ID claim that it is raining without going outside to check.
The problem doesn’t lie in examples of objects that are “obviously” designed by intelligent humans; it lies in the ID claim to see “blatant design” in nature, coupled with an absolute refusal to provide any account of who, what, when, where and how.
ID is no more than the most recent religious cloak for anthropomorphism of nature. Humans used to imagine gods in rocks, IDists still imagine gods in molecules.
I asked WJM
“What objective tests can you offer to guard against your “looks designed to me!” detector giving you false positives?
I’ll paraphrase WJM’s response:
“None! I’m the smartest man in the world and if it looks designed to me it MUST be designed!”
Hey, this “paraphrasing” thing can come in pretty handy, right WJM?
She knows and we know because we already are aware of the English language. That’s additional information above and beyond the “design” itself we had and needed to detect your “design” example.
Another big logic FAIL for WJM.
Let’s make the depravity of anti-ID zealots even more obvious: If one found the entire text of War and Peace spelled out word for word in the DNA molecules of an ancient ant trapped in amber, or in any molecules whatsoever anywhere in the universe, would any null hypothesis testing be necessary to conclude that the best explanation is (categorical) ID? Would any probability distributions need to be done? Would we need to examine the chemistry and the physics of the materials involved?
There are some configurations of matter that we would know beyond reasonable doubt to be the product of ID whether or not there was any available, known intelligent agent or known process for creating it. To deny this is, as KF points out, to endarken the mind to the point where absurdity is preferable to the obvious.
I never limited the available information to “the design itself”. The spectacular obviousness of the ID of the molecular arrangement of the challenge example hinges upon the recognition of the pattern and the meaning contained therein.
There are configurations of matter that are (to us, based on our recognition of kinds of patterns) undeniably the product of ID regardless of where we find them, or what materials we find them in, whether or not a human was available at the time or had the means to effect the artifact in question.
William, War and Peace was written using more than 4 letters.
;
Poor old IDists, always falling for the same crap:
http://forward.com/articles/157033/bible-codes-a-lie-that-won-t-die/?p=all
No doubt this will blow your mind:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/04/pi_meme_on_reddit_and_george_takei_your_life_really_is_encoded_in_its_digits.html