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Author
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Topic: Design Inference Game II
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gregory the grey
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posted 08. February 2004 19:27
At the risk of offering thoughts that differ from other perspectives on this topic...
The basic question still remains:
What is the difference between design inferences via human-made applications (e.g. images) of W. Dembski’s explanatory filter (EF) and design inferences via non-human-made applications? After reading many of Dembski’s words and writing about the EF in 'recommended literature,' I can remember no successful or remarkable attempts to distinguish human-made design from non-human-made design. Could someone please provide feedback to this question?
I.e. that which Mousetrap, Archaeology, Mount Rushmore, Statues on Easter Island, and Sculptured Plants have in common and which Bacterial Flagellum, Snowflakes and the rest of the Cosmos do not. The above question may be considered a diversion to this thread’s specialized purpose by some, however, these hidden images (you can picture them in your own mind, I suppose) appear directly relevant to this Game and the meanings behind it. I hope some brave soul out there will grace this theoretical and community question with a reply.
Cordially from far away,
Gregory the Grey
[ 11. February 2004, 20:35: Message edited by: gregory the grey ]
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Cre8ionist
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posted 08. February 2004 20:50
Pim quote:
Del relies on a concept called counterflow to detect design/agent activity. Counterflow means that the observation indicates that there was a process involved which runs contrary to what would have resulted from regularity and chance processes.
Detecting counterflow is what can help a design(er) inference. I am not convinced that detecting of 'counterflow' through complexity and interacting parts in nature can lead to a scientifically succesful identification of design, especially intelligent design.
Thanks, I'll wait til I read it to comment further........Cre8
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FRDiamond
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posted 11. February 2004 12:12
Pim:
quote:
the findings are that simple rules (such as perhaps natural selection) can generate emergent structures.
My point is that algorithm (or, "simple rules") at inception is proof of intelligent design. imho that random initial conditions cannot be the source of "rules", because "natural selection" is not a force or a power itself, any more that "history" is a force or a power; both are an effect of other causes. The only sense, imho, in which "natural selection" can be described in a "rule" sense is that the ones who survive are the ones who survive. The ones who produce the most offspring are the ones that produce the most offspring, none of which comes close to the complexity of the algorithimic rules cited in the analysis of the termite mounds. For example, the action of "picking up blocks" is simply assumed, and it is never causually explained as to how or why such activity could (or "should") originate from "initial random conditions". Thus, it seems to me that the aforesaid "simple rules" are just a way to smuggle in intelligence or SC without acknowledging the same, or, simply another way of "drawing the target (a different 'target'", of course:^) around the arrow". Cordially,
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Rex Kerr
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posted 11. February 2004 13:44
But simple rules can (presumably) be found randomly, or by brute force. Thus, one has little confidence that they were intelligently designed. If one assumes picking up blocks in order to generate a termite mound from simple rules, then one has to ask if picking up blocks is intelligently designed, not whether the termite mound structure has an intelligent distribution of blocks. (Note: when we look at it, we see the distribution of blocks, and that is what intuitively seems designed.)
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FRDiamond
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posted 12. February 2004 11:26
quote:
But simple rules can (presumably) be found randomly, or by brute force.
I'm not sure exactly what is meant by, "can be found randomly", but brute force reminds me of IBM's Deep Blue, or whatever the program was called, that beat Gary Kasparov in chess. It was a program created by very intelligent designers with specific chess principles in mind, who used, among other principles, the concept of brute computing force. The rules of good chess, or termite mound building, in terms of computation, are not that simple, at least to me. "Can be found" is a passive gramatical construction, but in reality an applied intelligence is required to find them, and a power is required to actualize them.
Cordially,
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FRDiamond
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posted 12. February 2004 11:53
quote:
But simple rules can (presumably) be found randomly, or by brute force.
I'm not sure exactly what is meant by, "can be found randomly", but brute force reminds me of IBM's Deep Blue, or whatever the program was called, that beat Gary Kasparov in chess. It was a program created by very intelligent designers with specific chess principles in mind, who used, among other principles, the concept of brute computing force. The rules of good chess, or termite mound building, in terms of computation, are not that simple, at least to me. "Can be found" is a passive gramatical construction, but in reality an applied intelligence is required to find them, and a power is required to actualize them.
Cordially,
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Rex Kerr
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posted 12. February 2004 16:46
I am thinking not of Deep Blue, but rather simple cellular automata (and other such simple recursive devices), as illustrated by Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. You may, in particular, wish to look at Chapter 2. Pages 27 and 32-34 are particularly illuminating. It seems scarecly possible that something so complex could be specified by little more than the numbers "30" and "110".
By brute force, I simply mean trying out every single (in order or at random) possible simple algorithm until you stumble upon a behavior or pattern suited to the problem at hand. This is something easily enough done by natural selection.
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Cre8ionist
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posted 13. February 2004 07:59
Could I solicit some design inference comments wrt the following unassociated pics (I only put them together to highlight their similarity of appearance) while we're waiting? This could help with what I think will follow after the game.
Pim, perhaps you could even apply Del's methods to them....................Cre8
[ 13. February 2004, 11:59: Message edited by: Cre8ionist ]
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FRDiamond
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posted 17. February 2004 11:18
quote:
... By brute force, I simply mean trying out every single (in order or at random) possible simple algorithm until you stumble upon a behavior or pattern suited to the problem at hand. This is something easily enough done by natural selection.
Rex, I have read Chapter Two. At your recommendation I am in the process of reading the entire book.
My initial impression still is that given "initial random conditions" there is no "problem at hand" in the first place. There is no task. What is the "task" of the pixel graphics illustrated in Chapter Two? 'Natural selection' is only an effect of something else; it is not a force or a power in and of itself. It does not operate on anything. It does not "do" anything.
The applied simple rules (logic gates?)of cellular automata produce (given the existence of pre-existing computer technology, and the pre-existing Minds to program the mathematical instructions) some interesting looking arrays of pixel graphics. These pictures seem to me similar in some respects to fractal images, nothing much more.
I am attempting to get the next picture on a web site so that it can be posted here. Sorry for the delay. Cordially,
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Rex Kerr
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posted 18. February 2004 02:11
Natural selection selects for survival. That's the problem at hand. If you happen to be, say, a fish that lives in sea-grasses, it might aid your survival if you develop a mottled pattern with some large-scale structure and some small-scale structure. You're harder to see that way.
If the genes involving cell-cell signaling and pigmentation get shuffled around, it's similar to trying different simple cellular automata. The fish that hit upon Rule 30 (by accident) survive. Now we have all interestingly mottled fish--with no intelligent design behind it.
(And then, perhaps the cell-cell signaling in the visual system of the predator fish would also stumble into Rule 30, or a simple Rule-30-detector, and they would then survive better as they could more easily catch and eat the Rule-30 fish. And so on.)
If we come in after the fact and look at these mottled fish and marvel at the complexity and (to some extent) reproducibility of the patterns, we're liable to miss the underlying simple rule. If we notice the simple rule, we can't conclude intelligent design directly--because that simple rule was used by accident. At the very least, we have to suppose that the underlying system that made a simple rule possible was what was intelligently designed. But we can't just assume that; maybe it's simple rules all the way down. We certainly got something more complex-looking starting from something simpler; if you can go upwards in complexity, there seems no a priori reason why one couldn't have gotten to the existing complexity from something simpler.
(Whether a complex system actually came from a simple one via accidental discovery of simple rules (and other chance events) is a complicated one. My point is that you cannot simply assume that the existence of a simple rule implies intelligence. Note that snowflake growth is reasonably well modeled by simple rules. You don't need to start with intelligent agents to sample simple rules--just chemicals with different properties.)
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Cre8ionist
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posted 19. February 2004 15:40
The glowing fish pictured above are actually transgenic. More specifically, fluorescent genes from jellyfish are used to give the fish their glow.
Visit http://www.glowingpets.com/tk-1_fish.htm and
http://www.nus.edu.sg/corporate/research/gallery/research12.htm
for more info. Therefore, their glow can be attributed to ID, just as the bottle's can.
This leads me to the following questions:
What would evolutionary scientists make of the DNA of the glowfish (assuming they were unaware of the intelligent intervention)?
Would they invoke either parallel or convergent evolution? Without developing tests for ID detection, how can we be sure that there hasn't been intelligent intervention in biology in the distant past?. Though Pim didn't respond, how would Del's "counterflow" method(s) have applied to the transgenic fish?............................................Just some thoughts while I'm waiting for the next pic......Cre8
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 24. February 2004 13:25
Creationist: Without developing tests for ID detection, how can we be sure that there hasn't been intelligent intervention in biology in the distant past?.
Good point it all depends on the evidence and our ability to detect it. That natural processes can explain something is no reason that intelligent design may not have played a role either. The problem is that when natural pathways exist, making an intelligent design inference can become quite complicated. Even when we are unaware of natural pathways such an inference can be fraught with complications.
As far as Del's approach, I am not sure how he would use his arguments. Perhaps some ID proponent can help us understand how to apply a design inference approach to these examples.
Finding scientific hypotheses can involve quite a bit of work. How would creationist suggest this could/should be done?
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gregory the grey
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posted 09. March 2004 11:02
Brainstorms community, please accept my apologies. Perhaps in some way I feel partly responsible that this promising thread got derailed and that the Design Game II is not progressing after photo/picture/image/icon #6 (‘The Case of the Bearded Hand’). And that the Game does not appear to be coming to its conclusion, and that a post-game story is delayed from being told and lessons learned from this contest. Stuck at 117, ‘all you nations.’
But I wouldn’t want to take too much credit for what was already becoming a discontinuous conversation, where the EF’s ‘design inference’ did actually get put to another test. Perhaps not relevant now, but when does a failure to assess questions about human agency and non-human agency doom the IDM to further specialization of tasks and disciplines of centralized focus? The simplicity of the method must involve the human who is applying the method; that appears to be a baseline requirement.
If, however, human agency is not willing to be addressed by our respective gamekeepers, who in defining the rules of the game are themselves fallible human agents, then how does intelligent design theory more generally (however helpful probability theory and numerical appraisals may be, speaking empirically) without recognizing a designer (or Designer) expect to succeed any more than astrology or SETI in providing a scientific method? Otherwise what it appears you’re asking in this Game is just, ‘what makes you think this picture is or is not made in heaven?’ But nobody dared suggest that this topic necessarily has any historical roots in or relevance for Christian studies, and PvM the last poster can attest to that.
In regard to the ‘game,’ one might fairly ask what similarity does this exercise have to do with a game? When does one side win or lose? How does one score points or move toward victory or perfection? How does one make a strategy and a training program to better ‘compete’ in this game as it is presented? Do these questions matter at all, more or less if there is a teleological principle hidden in the game that the players do or don’t understand (but perhaps must follow anyway)? Everybody these days wants to know who made the rules and how or why. The rules may be challenged and then better defined in response. Maybe there doesn’t have to be a teleogical principle in order to play the game. But then why play? These questions and thoughts appear to hold some answers or at least provide space for further dialogue that would resolve the hesitation by discussants for this ‘game’ to continue.
That is enough to be said on the destiny (Neo doesn’t believe in destiny at first) of the Game. So I shall now turn in another direction and say once more clearly to re-iterate what I said earlier on the topic, through the New Science of Giambattista Vico:
quote:
“But in the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity, so remote from ourselves, there shines the eternal and never-failing light of a truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind. Whoever reflects on this cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made it, He alone knows; and that they should have neglected the study of the world of nations or civil world, which, since men made it, men could hope to know.” – Vico (New Science)
Calling for a study of the ‘world of nations’ is to ask: when is enough of glowing trans-gendered fish compared with crocodile sandcastles? Snap this! Vico offers a novel suggestion for design theories, which would care more about the arm holding the object-for-filter and the purpose or background of the photographer, but which would all but ruin or reinvent the meaning of this mathematical-visual Game through exposure to civil society. I guess if the shoe doesn’t fit, then hypothesize a new one...
Surely, a brilliant find for the IDM would mean deeper and more complex connections for intelligent design theory, searching for the roots of its aural/visual transformation into 21st century acceptability. Has anyone ever applied the EF to sounds rather than to images? Perhaps Dembski, Meyer, Johnson and others ought to dig a bit deeper for a beautiful mind into Vico and his New Science, since the IDM is likewise now proclaiming a ‘revolution’ in science and society via its conceptual apparatus.
If you would ask me, I submit Human Selection instead of Natural Selection which would change ‘the nature of’ this game dramatically. The Explanatory Filter does not do the same to human-made applications as it does to non-human made applications. When I offered this at ISCID before, nobody complained or said it was old hat or that the cat came back or that it was disingenuous or uninteresting; nobody even said a word!? My strategy is not born under the influence or aegis of the Wedge strategy; so perhaps because of this I’m not ignored but just not invited to your conversation.
For better or worse, I am of a generation of scholars who understands the real revolution of electronic media and technologies (what is really changing this conversation most dramatically, and actually allowing us to have this game) because I was born with them in my ‘natural’ environment, and this gives me an entirely different vantage point and perspective on Evolution than most people over the age of 50. This is not to discriminate by age but to help us communicate across those generated gaps.
If you wish to ignore my philosophical concerns, pleas and correctives, then please at least be grateful and forgiving in your lack of willingness to discuss this topic philosophically. If you’re curious about what neo-ID/neo-EVO looks and sounds like, or if you wish to share your knowledge on this topic then please respond accordingly. I am humble to the wise voices and the knowledge present on this discussion board. Perhaps I just need to rub the lamp more gently.
My apologies for the scratches, but some things just have to be said.
Respectfully yours,
Gregory the Grey
[ 09. March 2004, 11:06: Message edited by: gregory the grey ]
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FRDiamond
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posted 09. March 2004 14:51
Gregory,
You have nothing to apologize for here. I appreciate your comments. I haven't responded until now because I can't really find anything in your responses with which to disagree! ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Cordially,
[ 09. March 2004, 14:53: Message edited by: FRDiamond ]
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