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Author
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Topic: A Gödelian Argument Against Darwinism
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Janitor@MIT
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Member # 125
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posted 15. April 2003 12:58
If evolvability ~ designability ~ solvability ~ decidability = 1
Then “Crash.”
I thought of that because I’ve crashed this !@#$% computer twice already this morning.
I suspect its because I keep feeding it undecidable = deadlock problems. (More likely is that the OS is a POS.)
Now if in the general case evolvability = designability < decidability then… ?
Does Dr. Dembski’s quasi-godelian argument cut both ways? Or am I just FOS?
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 16. April 2003 15:18
Ged,
As long as you now know that there is good evidence that the T3SS did not predate the flagellum, I'm satisfied.
If you notice, the McNab article was published before the paper that I referenced. This may not matter that much (since there are papers that point to similar conclusions before the McNab paper), except that in calling the export machine of flagellum a secretory system gives us no insight into the origin of the bacterial flagellum. The homologies that McNab points to themselves are there because it evolved from the flagellum . So of course there are going to be similarities. And the reasons for this are not just phylogenetic.
With respect to the UPB, the UPB represents the constraints that a particular pathway has of occuring in our universe. I don't think that the number is so low as to exclude any pathway. In fact, for one particular part of the Krebs cycle, Miller himself used the UPB. But it is realistic. In fact, as Dembski points out, Seth Lloyd came up with a number that is 30 orders of maginitude worse then Dembski's, independantly of any Design theory. So, I think it is realistic. But perhaps that discussion can be fleshed out in the Specified Complexity catalog thread.
As for the analogy, I think that I have shown that the analogy is not merely about philosophy, I was merely labeling my discussion of it and how it is an exact analogy. Since no discussion of that is present in Ged's reply above, I see no reason to copy and my paste my discussion of that, since it's one page away.
There is no difficulty in the argument if the reasonably likely case is given. But no such case is likely forthcomming in a testable manner if critics keep alluding to vague imagination. With respect to the T3SS, what this points to is that it is easier to get from a more complex system to a less complex system, and much harder to get from a less complex system to a more complex system. The former is predicted by Intelligent Design theory, the latter is not predicted by Darwinian evolution, indeed it is Darwinian evolution's argument that simpler systems evolved to more complex systems. So the statement that there is a "common precursor to all" is not being pointed to by this example. This is not the type of evolutionary change needed to make the case that there is a simpler precursor "to all".
The eliminative argument only suffers from a Godelian argument if it can be shown that it needs to eliminate all invisible , untestable, future explanations or even explanations that will never be given and that certainty is required in order for ID to even be a valid theory. Fortunatley, all of this is false.
As for your thread suggestion, there are already plenty of threads (and one specifically dedicated to it) that address the bacterial flagellum, and most likely the issue will come up with the Catalog thread.
[ 19. April 2003, 15:37: Message edited by: Nelson_Alonso ]
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Danpech
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Member # 163
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posted 17. April 2003 02:28
Dembski draws what I see as an odd comparison:
quote:
it's logically possible that with my very limited chess ability I might defeat the reigning world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in ten straight games. But if I do so, it will be despite my limited chess ability and not because of it. Likewise, if the Darwinian mechanism is the conduit by which a Darwinian pathway leads to an irreducibly complex biochemical system, then it is despite the intrinsic properties or capacities of that mechanism.
I don't think this comparison is exact. Here is how I would re-write the first half of Dembski's thought:
It's logically possible that with my usually very limited chess ability I might defeat the reigning world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in ten straight games. But if I do so, it will be despite my usually limited chess ability and not because of it.
Dembski is an instance of a class called human, and that class has the potential of a Vladimir Kramnik. Comparing this now to the Darwinian mechanism, it seems to me that we end up with a significantly different idea expressed by the phrase "in spite of the Darwinian mechanism".
I think that the wind-and-erosion-produced Mount Rushmore idea is the correct comparison (assuming that the Darwinian mechanism is intrinsically incapable of what Dembski says it is). But, I do not think that there is any reality to the idea that the Mount Rushmore faces have an actual possibility of being produced by wind and erosion. Although one can certainly imagine this happening, I think the probability is zero. I think it is logically impossible, and I would like someone to try to argue how it is logically possible. What notion of logic would such an argument have to use?
But, to assert that wind and erosion has zero probability of producing the Mount Rushmore faces does not of itself imply that these faces cannot be produced by indirect evolutionary means: according to NeoDarwinism, humans are the intermediate between the non-living world of general physics, such as natural weather, and the faces on Rushmore. As I see it, this evolutionary notion is not only without direct evidence, but it flies in the face of common sense. This common sense, expressed as a symbolic reduction, would be something like 'if a set of properties, p, can produce y, which in turn can produce z, then why cannot p produce z directly?'
But, if there are things that fit this symbolic reduction, yet the next question in line is not as to what is the philosophical statis of the precommitments that keep us from accepting the idea that humans are ultimately a product of a non-telic set. Rather, the next question in line is whether the things that fit this symbolic reduction are strickly comparable to the essential NeoDarwinian model.
[ 17. April 2003, 03:12: Message edited by: Danpech ]
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Rex Kerr
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Member # 632
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posted 17. April 2003 18:52
The probability is not zero; it may be effectively zero, but there is some chance that the atoms in the
rock will spontaneously dissociate ("evaporate") in just the correct fashion, over the course of a few hours, to produce Mount Rushmore.
Also, the common sense intuition is wrong. A whetstone can produce a knife; a knife can produce sliced bread. A whetstone cannot directly produce sliced bread.
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Danpech
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Member # 163
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posted 18. April 2003 07:12
If the atoms in the rock can spontaneously dissociate in just the right fashion, then the wind and airborn particles can carve the rock in just the right fashion---all by natural chance. Are you proposing the spontaneous-dissoctiation as an intermediate for the weather to work on? How much better chance does this dissociation have than the weather?
My thought of zero probability is about the patterns: can non-telic agencies produce these patterns? A weathered rock that is in the form of a face in very rough fashion is far from one that is in the form of a face in all the fine detail.
One's mind is able easily to imagine natural forces producing these specifications (because they produce rough resemblances of them), but ease of imagining it may not necessarily represent the mathematical potential of these forces. They may in fact have zero potential.
[ 18. April 2003, 07:35: Message edited by: Danpech ]
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Rex Kerr
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Member # 632
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posted 18. April 2003 19:49
Atoms dissociate with rates that go something like e^(-E/kT), where E is the transition energy (roughly equivalent to the bond energy for rock). To get exactly the right atoms missing, you take a finite number of atoms and multiply the probabilities for finite energies.
How can this number--a finite product of nonzero terms--possibly be exactly zero?
Also, you completely failed to address my counterexample. I was not claiming that intermediates can never be circumvented. I was only claiming that it is not a given that they can be, as shown by the whetstone-knife-bread example.
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