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!!!
Oh, so we really have discovered battleships on Jupiter and War and Peace written in a fossil ant genome? Do tell us more.
If your argument is that alien space travelers, upon landing on the moon, would not immediately consider the American flag, the 3 lunar rovers or the bases of the lunar landers to be designed by intelligences, or would have trouble figuring it out and would have to consult statisticians about finding a suitable null hypothesis, I’m happy to leave that argument as-is, without response.
Those are not analogies, they are examples. Some, like crop circles, are actual; some, like the War and Peace in an ant genome, are hypothetical.
That wasn’t his argument, but your evasion of the pertinent question is noted.
Something’s are obviously designed (to William). Got it. Now jog on.
Exactly so. William, please name a configuration of matter that all of us – if we were honest about it – would immediately recognize as designed by intelligence whether or not any humans were available to explain the origin of the design.
William, one of the problems with your “it’s not an analogy” claim is that the above examples are not valid. Simply put, your criterion – “whether or not there were humans available for explanation” – begs the question since all are actually items with humans available for explanation. There is no valid way to establish the premise that if they were found sans humananus we’d agree they were designed without humans. It’s just Paley’s argument all over again begging the question of how a human created object could be identified as intelligently created without humans.
I’ll repeat:
We concede there are some configurations of matter that are immediately recognize as designed by intelligence because they match previously known to be designed by intelligence configurations of matter.
What now?
William,
Do you believe that terrestrial life (prior to the advent of biological engineering) included any such configurations? If so, explain how you made this determination. If not, then what is your point?
I never said it was. I’m pointing out that the “grey area” seems to be 100% of the available area.
Why are crop circles designed but not that flower? Can you make that 100% less then 100% or not?
The only such point I can determine in all this is the “homochiral proteins as as unlikely as 500 all heads coins” blah that Sal’s been selling. As such I’d be interested to know Williams answer to your question.
No, they do not have to “match” any known previous design. I can invent a new crop-circle like design, or come up with all sorts of diagrams or hypothetical examples that do not match any previously known design. What they may be “like” are various categories of design that are recognizable even if we’ve never seen that particular configuration before.
Like hieroglyphics without the Rosetta stone – we can know a set of symbols was produced by intelligence without ever knowing that those symbols mean anything – indeed, even if they don’t mean anything.
For instance, I could make up a series of markings that is in no known language and which don’t even represent anything, but because of the nature of the markings (circles, squares, repeated squiggly lines, etc. – ) that set of markings would be immediately recognized as the product of intelligence.
Unless you are going to argue that alien intelligences could have no understanding of geometry or fundamental geometric shapes, I could randomly distribute squares, triangles and circles onto a smooth surface of stone that mean absolutely nothing to anyone and you would still immediately know an intelligent agency produced that artifact.
Indeed, unless you are going to argue that an alien intelligence would not recognize the artifacts we left on the moon as the artifacts of intelligent agent, you have no meaningful argument. If you are going to assert that, in your opinion, an alien intelligence would not know that those artifacts were intelligently designed upon looking at them, I’m content to let that particular assertion stand there for everyone to see in all its glory.
I have no beliefs about it.
This is the 4th time I’ve said that my point is not about biology.
I’ve made my point explicit in this very thread. I’ve said “my point is ….”.
Go find it, then come back and tell me what my point in this debate is.
So, here’s a question (in pursuit of my actual point):
10,000 years from now, let’s say the moon has left Earth’s orbit and is in deep space. Our solar system has been annihilated by a supernova. A space-traveling alien civilization has landed on the moon in deep space, and come across the objects we left on the moon – such as, 3 lunar rovers, the American flag, lunar lander bases, etc. They are all in good shape for whatever reason.
In your opinion, would the intelligent alien creatures be able to tell that those objects were intelligently designed? Would they wonder where that civilization was? Would they ponder what the markings on the flag meant? Or would they think they might have been generated by non-intelligent, natural processes and try to figure out how that metal got fabricated and put together naturally, and how the wiring and other systems came about “by chance”? Do you think they might think it was either an animal of some sort, or maybe the skeletal or “petrified” remains of an animal?
Or, would they even notice the objects, walking upon them? Would they just “blend in” with the rest of the rocks and terrain – nothing special to see here, folks, move along?
Richard,
Explicitly stating what my point is, is the opposite of “obtuse”.
Categories of design all existing as previous knowledge of known to be designed things.
How do you know that if you don’t have any previous knowledge of what constitutes a symbol? You keep dancing around the problem but it won’t go away.
Only because they pattern match previously know to be designed symbols of circles, squares, etc. You can’t get around the problem of requiring previous knowledge to detect your “design”.
Were these created by an intelligence?
What alien intelligences? There you go with your fantasy examples again.
Any chance you could stick to the real world for a change?
The next time you explicitly state what your point is will be the first. In the meantime the “obtuse tit” hypothesis remains unrefuted. 😉
You cannot detect iron without knowing what iron is. You can detect (experience) a thing, and then call it iron, but without knowledge about a thing, you cannot detect it. Detection of some thing that exists requires some knowledge about it, or you cannot detect it.
Requiring knowledge about a thing in order to detect it is not a “problem”, it’s a valid tautology. You’re throwing up nonsensical concept bluffs and blocks here simply to avoid admitting the obvious.
“Design” isn’t a physical object like iron. “Design” is the result of a conscious visualization and manufacturing process. Your job is to detect that the process was used, not a physical object.
Another big analogy FAIL for WJM.
Depends on what you’re talking about. What is within each rectangular block – no idea. If one includes the apparently perfectly rectangular, individual frames as part of what one considers, then I’d be very suspicious that it was designed. The entire arrangement (configuration) of rectangular blocks and images as a whole – definitely intelligently designed.
WJM, let’s say you are hiking in the woods and come across some scratch marks on a tree. Walk us through the steps of how you’d determine if the marks were an intelligently designed message as opposed to just some animal sharpening its claws. Explain how to tell just from the marks themselves without using any additional outside information.
Thornton,
I appreciate you invaluable help in making my point here 🙂
I would certainly be wondering how to test a null hypothesis. Why on earth not? Do you know what a null hypothesis test is?
Yes. But your “or” is misplaced there.
No, it is not. It’s an extremely important factor, and you just alluded to a comparable factor yourself: if you see something that looks as though it might be an artefact, your first rational project is likely to be to try to find some corroborative evidence for an artisan. If the thing dates from human era, then we have plenty to hand. If it doesn’t, then we’d have to go looking – which is precisely what IDists never do – yet claim to use”the methods commonly used by other historical sciences” (Meyer). But they don’t.
If humans were available, then obviously “humans made it” would be your first hypothesis. If not, then you’d look for some other artisan. Of course it would “make one bit of difference”!
William,
No, you haven’t.
I searched for it and it isn’t there. You did not write “my point is…” anywhere upthread from that comment.
Show a little initiative and link to wherever it is you supposedly make your point.
William J. Murray: I’m not making an argument by analogy.
I agree. The problem is not that you are making an analogy, but that your thought experiment lacks the very details that would make it an informative thought experiment.
I never claimed that I had a process or “steps” that could “determine” if some markings were the product of ID or some non-intelligent mechanism.
Nor have I ever claimed that no “outside” information or knowledge was necessary. That would be nonsensical; knowledge of the thing you are attempting to detect is necessary to detect that thing. That is a valid tautology.
My claim has always been that some configurations of markings (matter) would be immediately known by us to be the product of an intelligent agent, to the point where any other explanation would be implausible.
That is trivially true. The best way for me to keep making my point here is to keep my assertions and claims within the realm of the trivially, obviously, undeniably true.
Even if that were the case, whether or not that is a problem depends on what my point is.
Everyone has already agreed this is true. Now tell us WHY it is true, and HOW you make the “design” determination.
I say it’s because you pattern match the unknown with previously known to be designed things.
If you have an alternate method that doesn’t use additional previously known information please provide it. Merely saying “it’s intuitively obvious” doesn’t cut it.
That’s the point you keep running away from.
WJM,
I noticed you used the word “beliefs” there, which some of us might understand in a different way than you.
Do you find any of the arguments put forth by your colleagues KF, Sal, and so forth, regarding configurations in terrestrial life being designed, persuasive? If so, which arguments and which configurations?
No, this is NOT “political white-washing”. Of course SETI was looking for signals that might be recognizable as the product of non-human intelligence. But nobody was looking for prime numbers in binary, or anything comparable. One candidate would be “technological noise”, for instance from internal communications.
And in any cases, William, you are flogging a straw man here – nobody is actually saying you can’t detect design in the absence of a known designer!
I don’t see anyone not “admit[ting]” this. Who were you thinking of?
Please answer the question addressed to you, William. It gets a bit tiresome when you just comment on questions, rather than answering them.
What is the “obvious” you think that people are not “admitting”? I think everyone here has readily conceded that it is possible in principle to infer correctly that a thing was designed, even in the absence of any obvious designer.
What some of us (me for instance) wants to know is: what is the principle by which you decide? Paradigm cases are all very well, but if we are going to detect a designer, in say, some biological organism, or a set of cosmological constants – how do we do this? Finding evidence of a designer’s hand in inanimate objects is one thing, especially when we know that organic intelligent agents are possible, and can surmise that we may on the only planet on which they evolved, but how do you set about it when the artefact itself is an reproducing organism, or something so large (the cosmos) that it could not possibly have been designed by any humanoid?
What is the “tell”?
Yes, probably.
Well, I’m glad you put the scarequotes in there, William, because as you know by now “by chance” tells you nothing. On the moon there isn’t even an ambient fluid into which conceivably might move things about and mix them up a bit, nor any evidence that there has ever been one. So the only alternative to design would be some sort of geological or crystalisation process, and I expect that could be readily ruled out.
That’s possible, but I think it could be ruled out fairly quickly, as they show absolutely no signs of being able to grow, sustain themselves, or breed. They are not made of organic materials, they are not made of modular units likely to be able to duplicate themselves, with appropriate specialisation. Nor are there any raw materials that could possibly be metabolised into metal structures.
Possibly, but probably not, although they might have thick covering of dust from meteor strikes by then, and perhaps even be damaged. I think they’d look pretty striking though, and the tracks and footprints would also be interesting data.
It appears you are right. I cannot find it either. Maybe I made the post in another thread, or something else happened to it. So I’ll repost and expand here, in light of what has transpired here since I first posted it (or at least thought I did):
My point here is to demonstrate that anti-ID advocates will say anything, obfuscate anything, and deny anything – even the thunderously, incontrovertibly obvious and trivial to the point of making absurd challenges, rationalizations and nonsensical assertions (such as holding that one should be able to detect something they have no prior knowledge about; or claiming that when someone says “no tossing involved” they want you to determine if tossing was involved; or holding that upon finding a clear, lengthy, cogent message written in English in some DNA they would have to examine the null before concluding it was the result of ID; or claiming that there is no qualitative difference between finding what looks like an image of the virgin Mary on a piece of toast and finding the entire text of War and Peace on a series of pieces of toast, dismiss/avoid perfectly good hypothetical challenges; etc.) – demonstrating their irrational anti-ID zealotry, which is the reason meaningful rational debate is impossible with them.
Yet at least fifteen people here by my count have attempted to discuss with you your claims about detecting design. You’ve ignored or fled from every question.
So who’s the one making meaningful rational debate impossible?
Indeed. I read a fair bit of science fiction and the ideas around how alien intelligence might manifest are a rich vein for stories. It is unimaginative in the extreme to assume that the mental gyrations of a swollen-skulled great ape species comprise even a significant subset of possible intelligent behaviors.
The SETI program is aware of this issue. They know full well that they are looking for signals from entitles similar enough to humans that water is an important molecule to them and radio is a part of their technology.
Intelligent design creationists leap from “human-like intelligence” to “intelligent designer” seemingly without considering any other alternatives. This is unsurprising, given their prior commitment to the intelligent designer having created humans “in his own image.”
True. To be fair, no intelligent design creationist has ever met your challenge. William is sitting on the Group W bench with Dembski, et al.
OK, so you’ve identified that. Had any thoughts on why rational debate is impossible with you?
Why don’t you try having an actual debate then? Make a case, support it?
The results might surprise you.
Trivially true statements are not particularly interesting because they contain no information.
Example: x = x is both trivially true and tells us nothing about x.
I don’t have the technical expertise/education/knowledge necessary to be persuaded in any way by technical/mathematical/statistical/scientific arguments.
Thanks
William, seriously: this post really does reveal your ignorance about scientific methodology. Again you refer to “the null” – what null? And are you disagreeing with Dembski who specifically advocates computing “the relevant chance [null] hypothesis” in order to see whether it should be rejected in favour of “Design”?
The “absurd challenges, rationalizations and nonsensical assertions” you refer to are no such thing, and you provide no reason behind your assertion that they are. The challenges that have been presented in this thread are absolutely pertinent, and if you want to check that Barry meant us to assume that the inferrer in the 500 heads scenario was supposed to be told that “no tossing [was] involved” in configuration, why don’t you ask him? In any case, we (or at any rate I) have clearly answered the question if it was asked on that basis: if Barry told me that no tossing had been involved in laying the coins, yes, of course, I would immediately conclude that the overwhelming probability was that they had been laid by an intelligent human being who for some reason wanted them all heads-up. So your assertion seems somewhat disingenous – did you not notice that I had answered the question on the assumption that your interpretation was what Barry meant? And did you not notice my questions as to what you thought, in that case, the point of Barry’s challenge was?
There may not be a qualitative difference, but there is certainly a quantitative difference, which we would find out by computing the relevant null.
Why you think this is an “absurd” enterprise is beyond me – well, I can only conclude that you do not know what a “null” is. And that you think that Dembski is just as absurd. It’s absolutely SOP to compute the probability of patterns of a certain class under, say, the null of no systematic process that predisposes to such a pattern. That’s precisely how we know that virgin marys on cheese sandwiches are quite likely under the null of “undirected toasting”, but that War and Peace in DNA would be extremely unlikely either under the null of normal evolutionary dynamics.
No, your “hypothetical challenges” are not “perfectly good”. They lack anything like the detail you need to be able to form a strategy for design detection. That may be because you think no strategy is required – that you can just look and tell. And in some cases (War and Peace in DNA) you probably can. But “Watcha Liz” in letter-shaped molecules is a totally inadequate hypothetical – because molecules have physical and chemical properties that strongly determine their configuration, and you would need to find out whether those properties made that configuration highly likely, or not. You would also need to know how many patterns you’d looked at before you found one that looked like a comprehensible English message.
As I said (and you have not attempted to rebut, except to pour scorn), matter has physical and chemical properties, which, at the molecular scale, are nothing like lego structures, and while it’s possible to imagine that a specific polymer, like DNA, might encode a decipherable message that indicated design, the idea that separate monomers might is virtually counter-factual. And so we’d have to suppose all kinds of imaginary physics in order to imagine what we’d imagine might have produced it. It really is like being asked whether fairies are the likely explanation for the levitating teapot. If teapots can levitate, why not? If monomers can arrange themselves into words and letters, why not? But they can’t, so…
Exactly, and I commend your straightforwardness in this regard. But by exactly the same token, nor do you have the technical expertise/education/knowledge necessary to know whether a technical scientific argument is “absurd” or not. And yet you are more willing to believe that the presenters of those arguments are psychopathic ID-haters than that they might have a valid point. Why?
I think William’s fondness for “trivially true statements” illustrates the ID approach at large. ID scholars and laypeople make statements like “a tornado cannot assemble a Boeing 747” or “500 fair coins cannot all end up heads.” These statements are true, but they tell us nothing whatsoever about the possibility of biological evolution.
Liz,
I appreciate the straightforward answers. Perhaps now we can set aside the “humans recognize what humans design” objection and move forward.
Do you agree that there are some configurations of matter that, regardless of where we find it, regardless of the substrate, regardless of if we know how it was done, who or what did it, their motives, what the configuration means, or even if appears to be instantiated in a manner apparently inhospitable/unavailable to all known or even imaginable forms of intelligence, we can still say with fair (not absolute) certainty: that thing was designed by some kind of intelligent agency…? Whereas, the 2nd most plausible explanation is “I must be dreaming” or “I must be hallucinating”, and a very, very distant, implausible concluson would be “that thing was made without input by intelligent agency” ?
WJM, why don’t you show us you aren’t an anti-evolution advocate who will say anything, obfuscate anything, and deny anything demonstrating your irrational anti-evolution zealotry by answering a few questions?
Start by explaining the steps of how you recognize “design” when you see it.
Can we get an ID empiricist in, please? William is taking ID backwards.
Please show me where I claimed a technical argument was absurd. I’m not saying I didn’t, I’d just like to see the context if, in fact, I did.
And we’re at the point where mind-powers, sans “big boy pants” isn’t even sure what arguments he himself is making.
There are no steps. I either recognize it, or I do not. Or, a third option is that I may be suspicious.
William J. Murray,
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Its a continuum, not three buckets.