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Author
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Topic: Randomness as a sign of mindlessness
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Regvi
Member
Member # 586
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posted 05. December 2002 17:12
Comsider this argument:
Imagine flipping a coin 1000000 times and getting only heads. It would seem reasonable to believe that the coin was designed to be unfair by some intelligence.
Now suppose we flip a fair coin 10000000 times and get a random sequence, which passes all the statistical tests which we subject it to. Since it is well known that long, highly random sequences are very difficult to produce, it would seem reasonable to believe that the sequence was designed by some intelligence.
It's interesting that most people would think that the second argument is wrong, while the first one is correct.
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William A. Dembski
Member
Member # 7
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posted 05. December 2002 17:37
The coin itself is designed. But,
**The flipping of the coin need not be under the control of a designing intelligence.
**The coin might be double-headed, in which case flipping it a million times is guaranteed to produce a million heads.
**If it is confirmed that the coin has distinguishable sides and is a rigid homogeneous oblate, then it might still land heads a million times in a row simply because it is flipped in exactly the same way each time (I'm told there are devices that can flip coins and always come up with the same side because they were so precisely calibrated -- I haven't confirmed this).
**Getting a million coin tosses to pass all statistical tests is not hard if the flipping process is truly random in the sense that all flips are stochastically independent and identically distributed. The vast majority of such genuinely random coin tossing sequences will pass our statistical tests.
**Imagine a million coin tosses where heads = 1, tails = 0 and the sequence spells out in ASCII code the play Hamlet. In this case the design inference is mandatory.
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Regvi
Member
Member # 586
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posted 05. December 2002 18:41
**Getting a million coin tosses to pass all statistical tests is not hard if the flipping process is truly random in the sense that all flips are stochastically independent and identically distributed. The vast majority of such genuinely random coin tossing sequences will pass our statistical tests.
Reply: Isn't this empty metaphysics, in Ayer's use of the word? How can we verify if the flipping process produces stochastically independent and identically distributed flips, except by a posteriori statistical tests on the sequence produced?
**Imagine a million coin tosses where heads = 1, tails = 0 and the sequence spells out in ASCII code the play Hamlet. In this case the design inference is mandatory.
I agree. But my argument does not contradict this. What I meant was that for a human mind, producing a highly random long sequence of coin flips is virtually impossible without using some natural process (eg radio noise and computers). Now, if this naturally produced sequence passes all of our statistical tests and is extremely random, then it is clear that no human being could have designed it. So therefore the sequence shows signs of superhuman design. Therefore, both Hamlet, and a very long, naturally produced highly random sequence show marks of design. Hamlet is obviously designed by a human or superhuman intelligence, while the super-long, super-random sequence, if designed, is designed by a super-human intelligence and definitely not by a human.
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Regvi
Member
Member # 586
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posted 06. December 2002 11:00
My point is that it might actually be possible to infer design not only from objects which have specified complexity, but also from highly random objects, which in a way also possess specified complexity. For example, random sequences produced from radio noise are highly valuable to computer programmers. Very long sequences with similar properties are impossible to design by humans. Then why not infer that a super-human intelligence has designed them, in the same way that we infer that a super-human intelligence has designed the human body? Is there any difference between the two cases?
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Regvi
Member
Member # 586
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posted 06. December 2002 11:04
My argument also applies to the entire cosmos, including all consciousness: it's clearly not designed by a human mind. Therefore, why not infer that the cosmos has been designed by a super-human mind?
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