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Author
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Topic: Actual Demonstration Experiments, Appeal to Correlation
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Salvador T. Cordova
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Member # 959
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posted 28. October 2003 17:02
I give lectures on Intelligent Design and in the process it became evident I needed a simpler and clearer way of demonstrating the concept of intelligent design to the general public.
Rather than appeal to information theory (not well understood by the general public), I appeal to a smaller better understood topic: correlation (which is part of information theory). It is also less subject to controversy, and is more testable experimentally, and the laws of physics are easier to apply to questions regarding correlation, particularly Wigner's calculations.
I propose a simplified procedure that any college student of science can explore himself. It is much like doing college chemistry experiments to validate accepted scientific laws. And it will get him thinking critically.
This will perhaps be a fairly non-rigorous brainstorm, but the experiments proposed are intended make intelligent design more accessible, and the experiments more hands on.
Behe's Irreducibly Complex systems show design, but to my knowledge, it is not straight forward to apply a statistical metric, at least easy to see by a college student in a 1-hour lecture.
I propose analysis of smaller universe of phenomenon which demonstrate design in a less controversial and very quantifiable mathematical manner.
Consider the following example:
2 sets of coins with the following configuration of heads (H) and tails (T):
Set 1
HTTHHTHTHTHT
Set 2
HTTHHTHTHTHT
The 2 sets demonstrate high (perfect) correlation. If we were to extend the number
of coins in each set to 500 and there were perfect correlation, we would rule out chance as possible cause for the configuration. Intelligent intervention is obvious if correlation occurred. The only way correlation occurs is by highly specified initial conditions, implying intelligence. Information is hard to define, but simple correlation is not!!
Physics Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner in an essay in the book "The Logic of Personal Knowledge. Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday.", indicated that a biological cell subjected to random physical processes under equilibrium conditions should not result in such highly correlated sets of information, i.e. a cell giving birth to an identical cell. (I wish to track down the studies that dealt with non-equilibrium calculations).
Wigner's approach rules out the highly speculative approach that believes a self-replicating system will eventually appear given enough time and starting from non-specific initial conditions. He used quantum mechanical arguments similar to von Neumann's derivation of the second law of thermodynamics from quantum mechanics. It would be worthwhile to make Wigner's calculations more rigorous, because the question of "Natural Selection" boils down to laws of physics and initial conditions.
I like Wigner's approach, it echoes of Polya's principle regarding mathematical induction. It easier to sometimes attack the more general problem, than fighting the infinitude of special cases (like bacterial flagellum). The specifics of physical anthropology, population genetics, etc. as proof of Darwin can be thus dismissed if more overriding laws of physics show Darwin can not be true. The approach from physics may be at least a more rigorous approach than irreducible complexity (although I agree with Behe).
Wigner calculations suggest self-replication by living systems is not predicted by the laws of physics, and actually apparently contradicts the laws of physics. Wigner used the word "miracle". The initial conditions have to be highly specified for a living cell to replicate itself, hence a design inference.
The only time we see such high "information" correlation between molecular configurations in the laboratory in non-living matter is from the effects of intelligence. Unless the initial conditions are highly specified and there is no prior constraint from the laws of physics and chemistry, the result is that complex molecules will be non-correlated to other complex molecules.
Thus, if a new highly complex DNA sequence is synthesized from scratch in the lab in one test tube, and an identical complex DNA sequence synthesized anywhere else in the universe, we would conclude intelligent agents were at work that caused the correlation (like a copy right infringement).
A step above identical correlation is correlation under some sort of simple transformation. A simple transformation is defined as having low information content.
For example,
Set 1
HTTHHTHTHTHT
Set 2
THHTTHTHTHTH
is perfectly correlated under the simple transformation of "invert the coin of set 1" In this case the transformation can be regarded as the information channel where the channel itself is described by small amounts of information.
Extending to biological systems, the correlation between the DNA code and the proteins expressed by that code is extraordinarily high and suggests intelligent design since the information channel (DNA transcription) is described by a simple mathematical transformation relating nucleotides ("sender") to amino acids ("receiver").
If Darwin is right (and I doubt he is), Nature (as in Natural Selection) is sufficiently describable, at least in theory, in terms of the known Laws of Physics and the initial conditions of the environment and the creature, thus we could get a falsifiable prediction of what creatures would arise from one generation to the next. What is frustrating is Darwin gives no precise, workable, scientific definition of Nature, except that he implies it is dumb and impersonal.
However, to specify all initial conditions would violate Heisenburg uncertainty, not to mention that it would take an infinitely powerful computer to predict what creature would result. But being so rigorous is not needed to disprove Darwin since he does not argue for highly specific initial conditions to support his theory. Rather he gives a completely amorphous, non-specific, completely un-quantified set of initial conditions we call "the environment".
Thus in the Darwinian view of Nature, it is sufficient to describe the Nature of Natural Selection by a probabilistic model for initial conditions and the resulting consequences. But given such an amorphous, random description of nature, cell replication would not happen unless there was a miracle according to Wigner. Cell replication happens only under specific conditions, hence design inference. At the very least, if Natural Selection is true, then Nature is intelligent.
The randomizing action of nature (defined by laws of physics and random initial conditions) result in loss of correlation, just like flipping a set of coins and seeing correlation disappear. For correlation to happen under such conditions, a new law of nature, according to Wigner, is needed.
Consider that I could toss a coin in the air, and it would eventually land somewhere. The initial conditions can be non-specific, but I can tell you with great certainty the exact final kinetic energy of the coin despite knowing little of the initial conditions. It would be zero. Likewise Wigner agrues, the likelihood of a self-replicating unit arising under the action unspecified physical forces is zero! Self-replication, life, only arises under extremely specific conditions.
I will experiment with the coin illustration with college students and see what happens. If it helps them see the light. It will be a good way to present intelligent design. The aim is to at least make the argument and definitions clearer, not necessarily even win the argument, but simply be understood. If physicists take up the question, all the better. I will report back the results.
BASIC EXPERIMENT:
Have two sets of coins. Demonstrate the unlikely hood of correlation.
1. I demonstrate correlation is unlikely without some intelligent agent.
2. I discuss that physics seems to suggest self-replicating structures should not arise apart from some new law or principle.
3. Discuss why I believe that new law or principle would have to be intelligent or conscious (as Wigner seems to imply) given principles of information theory.
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gedanken
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posted 28. October 2003 19:33
Of course you could refer to the second law of thermodynamics.
And as described, the argument seems to say that new laws of physics or the like are required for the cell to divide even now, since such duplication of genetic material is described as unlikely. Is this a point you wanted to get across?
And of course it might be important to go into the details of how the chemical process of duplication of genetic material occurs, such as in cell division. It occurs by chance processes, in which smaller molecules bounce around at random, but become lodged in sequences to assemble the copied genetic material. This is an example of highly random processes in each cell division (chemical components moving randomly) producing a nearly identical copy of the original genetic sequence, and this can be associated with processes performed by intelligent agents.
You could also discuss the possibility of involvement of intelligent agents in crystal growth. (A particularly facinating case is crystal growth of snow flakes.) There layer upon layer of new crystaline patterns are established by random material deposition (of ions bouncing around in solutions or suspensions, for example) depositing upon previous crystaline layers and thus duplicating the layer in a "self-replicating" manner in which the positions of the newly deposited atoms correlate closely to existing positions on previous layers. There are some crystals in which the later layers depend on which form is deposited in the previous layer, truly copying the previous layer's pattern. You could discuss any new laws required for this. And also this process is very similar in general principle to the random motion of molecules that fit into place in the duplication of genetic material.
One could note that these processes of replication of various structures are necessary for life to exist, and that without such tendencies in the real world for systems to replicate, that life would not be possible.
The problem I am having is that all these processes do not seem to really get at the original intended result.
[ 28. October 2003, 21:58: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 29. October 2003 00:57
quote:
Extending to biological systems, the correlation between the DNA code and the proteins expressed by that code is extraordinarily high and suggests intelligent design since the information channel (DNA transcription) is described by a simple mathematical transformation relating nucleotides ("sender") to amino acids ("receiver").
But it is exactly Natural selection which can be shown to act as a Maxwellian 'demon' by increasing the correlation between environment and genome, thus increasing the information in the genome. You simplification of the ID approach in terms of correlation may have served to show how ID cannot eliminate reliably natural designers, an argument of raised against it.
You may want to call Natural Selection intelligent or you may want to change the name from Intelligent Design to Design. That we see (intelligent) design in nature is not really the issue of contention, it's the designer(s) which are at issue. Natural Selection seems to be quite a capable designer in this sense.
Actually this also ties in nicely with the discussion about the relevance of the '4th law of thermodynamics' to the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy and correlation seem to be related.
See: The Boltzmann/Shannon entropy as a measure of correlation by John H. Van Drie for instance.
Schuster and Stadler in Landscapes Complex Optimization Problems and Biopolymer Structures (1993)argue that
"The structure of shape space provides also a firm answer to the old probability argument against the possibility of succesful evolution[138]"
138 is Wigmer's paper
I also ran across the following
quote:
John Baez, Is life improbable?, Found. Phys. 19 (1989), 91-95.
which explains the flaw in Wigner's proof. What his argument actually proves is something much weaker than what he wanted to prove. Roughly, he proves that if you first pick a specific design of a machine and then randomly choose the laws of physics, it's unlikely this machine will be able to reproduce itself in a specific amount of time. This should not be surprising: to design a machine that does a specified task, one usually needs to know a little about the laws of physics ahead of time.
link
[ 29. October 2003, 01:39: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 29. October 2003 16:16
Thank you Pim and Gedanken for your insights.
Pim thank you for the stuff on Wigner, it would have been next to impossible for me to have come across it on my own. Thank you.
I'm satisfied from the John Baez paper that you referred me to that Wigner's proof was not as strong as Wigner intended. Of note, Baez said he was surprised the paper did not receive more attention given it's sweeping claims. Baez indicated the question has not been settled and recommended methods of further investigation. Baez believes that likelihood of life depends crucially on boundary conditions, that is, constraints on the state of the system (which agrees with Michael Polanyi).
Thank you too for the reference to
The Boltzmann/Shannon entropy as a measure of correlation by John H. Van Drie
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics may be rephrased to state that correlations are highly unlikely to arise spontaneously, and that the
natural course of evolution of a system is one in which correlations diminish."
It highlights my thesis that correlation is a little more tractable and testable entity than irreducible complexity (although I intuitively believe irreducible complexity is a true argument, it does not seem easily expressible as correlation is).
For clarity, I refer to known natural laws as separate from intelligence. In as much as electromagnetic forces may come under grand unification, it is still acceptable to regard electro-magnetic forces as separate from the other forces of nature. In that vein, I treat intelligence (whether reducible or not) as separate. Notwithstanding that intelligence is hard to define, I proceed with the reasonable assumption that it exists.
To my mind experimentally, intelligence in conjunction with known natural laws has been shown to create correlation, and most importantly biological correlations. For example, cloned animals have sections of absolutely identical DNA. There is perfect correlation when there is no prior constraint from natural laws that there should be such correlation. The constraining boundary condition was provided by human intelligence in a thermodynamically open system.
Defining and testing for Specified complexity, even information, may be difficult, but finding correlation in highly aperiodic structures which should not be correlated by any know natural law is easier, and thus it can be reasonably adduced to intelligence. Such is the case with copyright infringement cases because though the copying means are mechanical, the cause is traceable to intelligence.
In cloned animals we have a classic example of the sufficiency of intelligence to intervene, and to provide boundary conditions which result in detectable correlation in biological structures. We could do a blind test of all cows in the world, and I bet we could identified the ones cloned by human intelligence!
Similarly we could argue for the case of artificial Polio strains. The resulting strain produced by human intelligence and intervention is indistinguishable from naturally occurring forms. Significantly, artificial Polio was not cloned, but arrived at through highly constrained boundary conditions. (Artificial Polio is at least a counter example against the claim of common descent, although one could reasonably say I'm being a sophist in saying so.)
The production and release of genetically engineered life forms demonstrates in principle the sufficiency of intelligence to create information in the genome.
To my mind, the argument is if intelligence sufficient to modify, and dare I say create life, is intelligence necessary?
To that end, science is trying to determine if known natural laws are sufficient. If known natural laws are not, we have 2 alternatives.
1. A new natural law is needed
2. Intelligence is necessary
If a new "natural" law is proposed (and this should be the topic of another thread) would that law bear the marks of being an "intelligent" law? I think so, but that is the topic of another thread.
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 29. October 2003 21:41
(since this section pertained to another post also, I provide it here for easy reference)
In regards to Maxwell's Demon and Adami's work on Random Mutation, Natural Selection (RMNS) there are some considerations.
First of all, I commend Adami for his hard work for the National Academy of Sciences. I esteem the computer simulation he created in an attemt to create an environment and organism where Maxwell's demon dwells. I do not discount Adami's work immediately on the grounds it was a computer simulation, not a physical experiment.
If Adami's work is true, the increase in information occurring in a biological system through natural selection does not rule out
the possibility of intelligent design of the organism. In fact, it can be argued that this is an indication of intelligent design of the organism.
In the vein of Adami's thought experiment, imagine an intelligently designed self-replicating von-Neumann machine with say a billion free bytes of information storage. It makes data measurements on the environment and hands it down to it's descendants (such is implied as a possibility by our esteemed ISICD fellow Frank Tipler).
That is approximately how Adami modeled this "make believe" digital life form with a finite pre-defined storage space. In fact, what impressed me was that this "digital creature" had to be specified and complex to begin with to do it's wonderful task of increasing information in it's natrual environment.
The capacity for information acquisition and increase was designed into the system from the beginning.
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gedanken
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posted 29. October 2003 23:13
quote:
The capacity for information acquisition and increase was designed into the system from the beginning.
Yes, are you saying that the capacity for information acquisition may have been part of basic physics of the real world from the very beginning?
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 30. October 2003 00:05
Salvador; If Adami's work is true, the increase in information occurring in a biological system through natural selection does not rule out
the possibility of intelligent design of the organism. In fact, it can be argued that this is an indication of intelligent design of the organism.
I agree that the possibility of intelligent design is not negated by the existence of regularity/chance pathways but when using Dembski's approach to ID, the presence of such pathways lead to the ID inference to reject intelligent design. In fact this is one of the objections raised by Del Ratzsch. But Dembski seems to accept these false negatives as being unavoidable when using an eliminative approach.
Salvador: That is approximately how Adami modeled this "make believe" digital life form with a finite pre-defined storage space. In fact, what impressed me was that this "digital creature" had to be specified and complex to begin with to do it's wonderful task of increasing information in it's natrual environment.
I doubt that the creature was complex to begin with, certainly not in Dembski fashion but if this is of concern to you then you should check out the work of Schneider who starts from zero information in the genome and shows how natural selection and variation are sufficient to explain the increase in information in said genome.
Salvador: The capacity for information acquisition and increase was designed into the system from the beginning.
Interesting since this seems to contradict Dembski's 4th law of thermodynamics (aka law of conservation of information).
In short, a correlation may be an indicator of intelligent design but if it can be shown that regularity and chance can lead to such a correlation the design inference according to Dembski's approach has to be rejected. This does not mean that there was no intelligent design but absent any positive evidence we cannot make such a determination.
Salvador: Such is the case with copyright infringement cases because though the copying means are mechanical, the cause is traceable to intelligence.
But in case of copyright infringement we deal with more than specification, we include motive, opportunity and means. Which makes the design inference an unsuitable candidate for detecting new design since it does not take such issues into consideration. Del Ratzsch reaches a similar conclusion.
Salvadore: Artificial Polio is at least a counter example against the claim of common descent
In fact artificial polio would not really be an argument to counter common descent. But perhaps I do not understand your argument here.
So sufficiency is not enough when the approach is eliminative and regularity and chance pathways can be shown to be sufficient.
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RBH
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posted 30. October 2003 01:36
A few remarks on Cordova's thoughts. First, he wrote quote:
To my mind experimentally, intelligence in conjunction with known natural laws has been shown to create correlation, and most importantly biological correlations. For example, cloned animals have sections of absolutely identical DNA. There is perfect correlation when there is no prior constraint from natural laws that there should be such correlation. The constraining boundary condition was provided by human intelligence in a thermodynamically open system.
...
In cloned animals we have a classic example of the sufficiency of intelligence to intervene, and to provide boundary conditions which result in detectable correlation in biological structures. We could do a blind test of all cows in the world, and I bet we could identified the ones cloned by human intelligence!
But exactly the same perfect correlation can occur through completely natural processes in a thermodynamically open system, as in the birth of identical twins. Hence seeing a high correlation is not in itself evidence of intelligent intervention, as in cloning. If one did your survey of all cows in the world, we'd have a very high proportion of false positive identifications of cloned pairs, and hence of intelligent intervention, because cows not infrequently bear identical twins. Only when we began to see clusters of four or five genetically identical individuals would we suspect intelligent intervention. (Not incidentally, that's one of the cues to an Oldowan tool site by archaeology - the occurrence of clusters of many apparently crudely worked stone tools found together.)
I agree that the use of correlation, and in particular correlation as a measure of mutual information, is a likely approach to analyzing biological evolution. It is a very complicated problem, since the mutual information of interest is generation-to-generation information transmission. I have not seen a satisfactory analysis of the generational transmission of information in an evolving biological population subject to a changing selective environment. Lately I've been thinking about what it would require and it makes my head hurt. The best bet (in my opinion) for approaching it is via the kind of tool Adami's avida platform offers.
A remark on what is "designed" in Adami's avida simulations. Cordova wrote quote:
If Adami's work is true, the increase in information occurring in a biological system through natural selection does not rule out
the possibility of intelligent design of the organism. In fact, it can be argued that this is an indication of intelligent design of the organism.
...
That is approximately how Adami modeled this "make believe" digital life form with a finite pre-defined storage space. In fact, what impressed me was that this "digital creature" had to be specified and complex to begin with to do it's wonderful task of increasing information in it's natrual environment.
"Specified" and "complex" here cannot be what Dembski means by the terms, at least not with reference to the replicators in Adami's simulations. The single "Ancestor" replicator with which the simulation is seeded at the beginning of a run does not meet Dembski's criterion for "complexity" (improbability) nor the criterion for being "specified." The former is certain - it is a simple calculation to show that the chance probability of the sequence of instructions that comprise the Ancestor does not fall below the UPB. The latter is my evaluation given Dembski's definition of specification in terms of a detachable pattern.
As I've argued elsewhere, any "intelligence" in such a simulation is in the building of the shell, the program that defines the virtual world within which the replicators evolve. However, within that virtual world the processes that occur - evolutionary operators like random mutation, imperfect reproduction with heritable variation, and differential reproduction as a function of relative fitness - are exactly the operators that evolutionary theory holds responsible for the evolution of biological structures. And in fact that occurs within the simulation under the control of those mindless evolutionary operators. In the avida platform one can track Shannon entropy through time and watch how it changes as a population evolves. At the end of an avida run one not infrequently has digital entities - evolved assembly language programs - that meet the criterion of complexity: the probability of their chance formation is below the UPB. I'm not sure if they're "specified" in Dembski's sense, but they are irreducibly complex on Behe's definition.
So under only the influence of the variables invoked by evolutionary theory within that digital world, a population that begins with a digital Ancestor program that is non-complex and non-specified has descendants that evolved to be both Dembski-complex and Behe-irreducibly-complex.
Quite obviously the original Ancestor is not evolved within the avida simulation. Abiogenesis is a different question from those that can be studied in the avida environment. But given a simple replicator and the basic evolutionary operators, these simulations demonstrate that in a sufficiently complicated environment, entities with complex structures can evolve, however one wants to define "complex."
RBH
[ 30. October 2003, 01:39: Message edited by: RBH ]
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 30. October 2003 13:23
Gedanken, Pim, RBH,
Thank you all for contributing to this thread. Your expertise and insights have helped me identify strengths, weaknesses, facts, and fallacies in my thesis. I may have to post several times to follow through on all the very good points contributed so far, and they are all very good and thoughtful points. It will be challenging to stay on the topic of my tread.
In response to Gedanken's question, I personally believe the laws of physics
were fine tuned, designed so that living beings could have information acquisition.
The shocking thesis of Michael Denton's book "Nature's Destiny"
was that the universe is such that humans were destined to acquire enough
information to one day deduce their own anthropocentric importance. Comically speaking, Denton's thesis is: "it is Natures Destiny that we humans realize the universe was designed for us to discover we were designed". However, that is quite a mouthful to even begin to address, and is perhaps another interesting topic......
I will address in later posts other good topics relating to my original theme of correlation such as the one which Pim brought up: Law of Conservation of Information and the 4th Law of Thermodynamics results in a paradox, but Adami's program gave me insight into this (later post).
Along the lines of correlation, what Adami's work suggested to me (non-rigorously) is
that information (and more basically correlation) does not likely increase in a life form independent of intelligent design of the object and the environment. If the "simulated Nature" that provided the selection force to the digital life forms were not designed, and if the organism were not designed, but instead random bits flooded into the computer's hard drive and memory and operating system, you get nothing but uncorrelated garbage, just a jammed dead computer, just like those imagined dead universes where the constants of physics were not fine tuned.
What is amazing is that even the "random" variable generation in such simulations had to be designed so it behaves "randomly". For random variation to participate in the process of sustaining and evolving life, the environment has to be designed, hence the Cosmological Antrhropic Principle. However, I believe the question of most interest is whether there is evidence life was formed with deliberate intent and directed by an intelligence at least analogous to our own but perhaps superior. The theme of this thread asserts that correlation is a means to answer the question less controversially than irreducible complexity (although I would be delighted whatever way the question is finally resolved).
The digital life form I claim is complex because one cannot just say it's a genome. It's ability to replicate is a complex specified process even in terms of computer software not to mention the specified complexity of the computer hardware. The software instructions for "copy life form" is specified and complex. (Incidentally, if the life form were programmed for "delete" instead of "copy" one gets a totally different result). The programmer may make a fairly small statement in his software code to invoke "copy" but this resolves into fairly complicated operating system and software operation.
Mechanical self-replicators like the digital life form, to my mind, have always been complex and specified in the physical universe (notwithstanding the self-ordering tendencies of crystalline structures and the like). Thus in this thread, for clarity, when I refer to self-replicators, I refer to biological systems and man-made self-replicators.
Incidentally to the topic of whether self-replicators are specified entities, and not just garbage, they are arguably so because they are specified by their replicas (ancestors and descenedents). The argument must be modified in the case of replicas that are not exact duplicates. Again, correlation is a good test of the intensity of specification. Self-replicators are only a subset of specified entities, but because of demonstrable correlation, there is less controversy in my mind as to whether self-replicators are indeed specified.
For example, a monkey can bang out a thousand pages of nonsense, but if we see an exact duplicate of those pages somewhere in the universe, we suspect that an intelligent agency for what ever reason, wanting to create or at least permit correlation. We would question the level of intelligence (or sanity) of the one wanting to create or permit such a correlation, but we would nonetheless infer it was an intelligence that ordained it to be so. One of the copies of the monkey's book was specified.
Hence I appealed to cloned animals as a starting point. (Thank you RBH, for pointing out the weakness of my argument because of twins, but you obviously got my drift.) With the cow example, we have at least one example in biology where we can arguably detect intelligent intervention simply by looking in the DNA of all the cows in the world. Amazingly, we can even deduce reasonably in the case of cloned cows that the intervention was human intelligence.
Seeing a multitude of identical cows and inferring that human intelligence was the cause, is a limited phenomenon for sure, but I believe this a starting point which will lead to further progress in research if we can find a way to extend the argument. We have a hint of at least some method of possibly detecting a guiding (possibly intervening) intelligence analogous to our own intelligence. Loosely speaking, if Denton's thesis is right, it's perhaps nature's destiny that we'll find a way.
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gedanken
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posted 30. October 2003 23:13
quote:
In response to Gedanken's question, I personally believe the laws of physics
were fine tuned, designed so that living beings could have information acquisition.
The shocking thesis of Michael Denton's book "Nature's Destiny"
was that the universe is such that humans were destined to acquire enough
information to one day deduce their own anthropocentric importance. Comically speaking, Denton's thesis is: "it is Natures Destiny that we humans realize the universe was designed for us to discover we were designed". However, that is quite a mouthful to even begin to address, and is perhaps another interesting topic......
I could agree with that in a more generalized manner, e.g. that the universe somehow comes out of creation such that life forms will naturally develop, including life forms that will discover how the universe operates, including that it operates such that life forms will develop with sufficient complexity to discover that they can discover such things.
But this is not of course an answer to the question that I asked. Are you saying that life forms do not operate according to the relationships of physics (by that I mean constrained to those relationships)? My original question was about whether the universe is such that physical matter naturally developes into lifeforms (and furthermore "designed" so as to do that), or are you saying that the universe is not of such a character? There are in essence two questions, one is about the character of the universe and its relationships, the other is aobut the cause. Your statement clearly answers the question of your belief about the cause--I am asking about the character of the universe.
A further variation of the question might be as follows: Is any system which gains information a "living being"?
[ 30. October 2003, 23:17: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 30. October 2003 23:47
Salvador: In response to Gedanken's question, I personally believe the laws of physics were fine tuned, designed so that living beings could have information acquisition.
A possibility or life was fine tuned to the laws ?
Salvador: Along the lines of correlation, what Adami's work suggested to me (non-rigorously) is
that information (and more basically correlation) does not likely increase in a life form independent of intelligent design of the object and the environment.
But all that is needed is a correlation between the genome and the environment. Surely the suggestion that intelligence is required for the environment is fully separate from the issue if natural selection can increase the information in the genome.
Salvador: What is amazing is that even the "random" variable generation in such simulations had to be designed so it behaves "randomly".
Random behavior is not that hard to understand and natural processes and chance can mimic randomness quite well.
Salvador: For random variation to participate in the process of sustaining and evolving life, the environment has to be designed, hence the Cosmological Antrhropic Principle.
But designed by what? The natural laws? What if the natural laws were not designed to lead to life but rather that life is fine tuned to the natural laws?
Salvador: The digital life form I claim is complex because one cannot just say it's a genome. It's ability to replicate is a complex specified process even in terms of computer software not to mention the specified complexity of the computer hardware.
But the use of the term complexity then becomes meaningless. Why not stick to the definition chosen by Dembski as it applies to ID? Or give it a different name?
In the end it all comes down to the issue can correlation be used as a reliable indicator of intelligent design? In biology natural selection seems to be sufficient to explain correlation and thus the answer would seem to be NO.
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RBH
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posted 31. October 2003 11:34
Cordova,
Here is a thought experiment to go with your coin flipping. Suppose there's a high hill with slightly irregular contours in the large field behind my house. I dig a pond at the top of the hill and run a water pipe up to the pond. I start the water pump, filling the pond, but being absent-minded, I forget to turn the pump off so the pond overflows its banks and water flows down the hill, eroding a bunch of ravines as it flows. Is it appropriate to say either that the existence of ravines or that the pattern of the distribution of the ravines on the hill is intelligently designed because I dug the pond and supplied the water?
Suppose further that I watched my neighbor dig a pond at the top of his hill, turn on the water, and forget to turn it off so his hill also became laced with eroded ravines. The specific pattern of ravines on his hill will be different from that on mine, but certain statistics describing the pattern and distribution of ravines will be very similar across the two hills. Would one take the similar statistical descriptions (i.e., the correlation of the statistical descriptions) of the patterns of ravines to indicate intelligent design?
Suppose now that I drive a few miles and observe a third hill, also laced with ravines. I do the appropriate measurements and find that the statistics describing the pattern and distribution of ravines are very similar to those that describe the ravines on the first two hills. Does that constitute evidence that the pattern and distribution of ravines on this third hill was intelligently designed?
(By "statistics describing the pattern and distribution of ravines" I mean such things as the tendency for ravines to be wider at the bottom of hills relative to their widths higher on hills, the relationship between their depth and the position on the hill at which the depth is measured, the relationship of ravine depth and width to the local angle of the slope, the relationship between the course of the ravine down the hill and the varying composition of the substrate, the fractional dimension of the fractal branching pattern of the ravines, and so on.)
Regarding your cow survey, you have to choose the species to survey carefully, since the survey will work only with sexually recombining organisms. For example, if you choose to survey the genus Cnemidophorus (a whiptail lizard genus), you'll find lots and lots of clones since those lizards reproduce parthenogenically. Would you suspect intelligent design if you found lots of whiptail lizard clones? Why or why not?
RBH
P.S. Added in late edit: I've developed the pond/ravines line of thought further on an ARN thread.
[ 31. October 2003, 18:10: Message edited by: RBH ]
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gedanken
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posted 31. October 2003 12:35
I'm sure I'll pay for this.
(The thought of all those identical cows was just too much!)
[ 31. October 2003, 13:04: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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gedanken
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posted 31. October 2003 20:33
quote:
Amazingly, we can even deduce reasonably in the case of cloned cows that the intervention was human intelligence.
Why is this "amazing"? We have motive, means, and opportunity--all hallmarks of intelligent agent action.
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 02. November 2003 03:36
Thanks for the cow picture, that was hysterical, Gedanken.
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Gedanken wrote:
But this is not of course an answer to the question that I asked. Are you saying that life forms do not operate according to the relationships of physics (by that I mean constrained to those relationships)?
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No. Some aspects of life are clearly operating within the known laws of physics.
What I am saying is that we cannot account for the ORIGIN ( not operation) of life from KNOWN laws of physics.
Also, I believe aspects of life are transcendent in the physical universe, just like math, and information.
Our esteemed ISCID fellow Walter Bradley has the best essay I've seen that expresses my beliefs at
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/bradley/docs/designed.html
the epilogue in his book
"The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories" gives a detailed but slightly dated treatment. He discusses the distinction between origin and operation science, and does excellent survey of chemical evolution.
This relates to RBH question of correlation found in twins or naturally occurring clones. The correlation would not be sufficient for inferring human intelligence, but it is sufficient for reasonably inferring a superior intelligence that formed biological life in the first place given the near impossibility of abiogenesis with known laws of physics as stated by Walter Bradley.
Correlation is a means of detecting intelligence if we can rule out natural reasons for correlation (such as in crystalline structures).
Adami's work is a simulation of existing biological systems. Since abiogenesis is nearly impossible, biological systems are reasonably inferred to be designed by intelligence in the first place, thus it is a tautology to appeal to biological systems as illustrations of correlation arising without the aid intelligence since such an appeal presumes that life did not have intelligent genesis in the first place.
If information increases in the genome, it was because the biological system arose by intelligent, non-random causes to begin with. (See my comment about von-Neumann self-replicators.) Adami succeeded in showing information increases in life forms because he was copying the blueprint of a life-form that was intelligently designed from the start, not a system that arose by random chance.
However, the spirit of the thread was to suggest a means of detecting intelligence. The thought of 100 young cows having identical DNA with a long dead cow would be attributable to:
1. miracle
2. human intelligence
3. unknown
It showed that correlation in a biological system in one specific case, when we have good data that it should not otherwise happen, is attributable to an intelligent cause (albeit human).
We have cases to detect human intelligence within a biological system using correlation, can we detect another form of intelligence with correlation? I hope so, thus it might lead to successful research. This is just a brain storm.
The reason I suggest correlation is that in some cases we may not have to appeal to irreducible complexity arguments to present a sufficiently persuasive case.
A replica of a cell is a complex specified entitity. It is complex because of the large amounts of aperiodic data, it is specified because it is a replica. That is why intelligence is inferred, just like the penny example. RBH ravines example is to amorphous to test for correlation, anything digital (like DNA) are better candidates.
For example, in addition to the problems with abiogenesis, something like the formation of the symmetrical halves of the nematode by different mechanism for each half is indicative evidence of intelligent design (with a sense of humor) because correlation occurs from 2 different mechanisms. These are problems for undirected evolution. See Michael Denton's "Nature's Destiny" for the story of the namatode.
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