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Author
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Topic: Is 2nd Law a special case of 4th Law?
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Jerry D. Bauer
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Member # 756
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posted 27. May 2005 18:57
All things in nature seek equilibrium. Some day the universe will die its heat death and all that IS will be nothing more than a random sea of floating atoms. Perfect equilibrium = maximum entropy = perfect order = total disorganization.
My point is that everything in nature seeks equilibrium so we would be remiss not to consider the equilibrium of a system because their state of equilibrium is their paramount quality.
And no, I don't believe there are racemic mixtures of L and D enantiomers that suddenly start spitting out either all Ls or all Ds. That would be magic rather than chemistry and IDists are a skeptic lot, I'm afraid. Thanks to time's arrow and its inherent cause and effect, chemistry and these solutions are entirely predictable.
Speaking of predictability, have you ever considered the probabilities that a single homochiral protein could form from a racemic mixture? Here is a mathematical model for you. Since there are 2 possible states these enantiomers can be in, L or D, and considering an amino acid sequence of 300 molecules we get 2^300 = 10^90 and there is only 1 chance in 10^90 that this would ever happen. Where are we with the math when we consider a simple organism like E. coli, where 3000 or so of these would have to form?
I'm afraid I have to look straight to science in this situation as I could never muster the faith necessary to believe this could just happen without a designer. The latter would be magic, not science, IMHO.
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andyg
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posted 27. May 2005 19:23
quote:
And no, I don't believe there are racemic mixtures of L and D enantiomers that suddenly start spitting out either all Ls or all Ds. That would be magic rather than chemistry and IDists are a skeptic lot, I'm afraid. Thanks to time's arrow and its inherent cause and effect, chemistry and these solutions are entirely predictable.
Jerry - Part of the problem you are having with your calculation is that you are assuming that the selection of enantiomers is always random. This does not have to be the case. I am aware that the ISCID moderators have disapproved in the past of people posting literature references willy-nilly, but here are some papers that show just that. There are many more out there.
Paper 1 Paper 2 Paper 3 Paper 4 Review 1 Review 2
Note to Moderator: I won't make a habit of doing this. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 27. May 2005, 20:59: Message edited by: andyg ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 27. May 2005 21:04
Very well. I'm happy to examine these papers. But would you mind please, to place your argument into your own words cutting and pasting the relevant parts of these papers you believe make one of your points?
A quick scan of these tell me that the papers do not relate to anything we were talking about. You may be right and me wrong, but you are going to have to bring a specific argument using each paper before we will ever know.
[ 27. May 2005, 21:05: Message edited by: Jerry D. Bauer ]
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Christopher D. Beling
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Member # 723
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posted 31. May 2005 05:51
Hi. Sal I am still concerned about the event B*, and those like it that exhibit regularity. Event B* was
[B*>= 3535 3535 3535 3535 - - - ->UCB
Consider the complexity-specification criterion for design as follows (I think all will agree)
Are we deleting B* on the complexity side or on the specification side? Your point is that B* does not exhibit complexity (because it can occur with high liklihood - e.g. in a regular crystal by natural law). In your reckoning then B* never makes it into the CSI category! However, my viewpoint was that B* contains enough information as a string to fulfill the complexity condition - but the specification (pattern) is too simple (as it exhibits regularity) - so that it is a specification (pattern) that signals caution. In short we need a regularity check (not the same thing as just being K-simple) in the above diagram. Is this "non-regularity check" to be on the complexity side or the specification side? Or is it just an independent condition?
ADDITIONAL PROBLEM: The protein event being presently discussed would look like:
[P> = LLLLLLLLLLL - - - - -> UCB
If we uncritically applied the "non-regularity check" to [P> then we would could say CSI - but with caution flag. This would not be true CSI if it had originated from a monatomic crystal (such as diamond). It would however, be CSI, if representing a true protein, it had been generated from the algorithmic information present in the cells DNA (for generally it has been agreed that this sequence does not come about by natural law). It seems we need background information on the system we are dealing with before applying a non-regularity criterion?
[ 31. May 2005, 06:50: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 31. May 2005 06:46
Chris:
Is this your idea, or did you pick it up somewhere else?
Let me add my 2 cents to it and perhaps we can hash it out.
I don't think you can state that complexity is improbability as I would argue it isn't true. Considering simple aggregate complexity as in erosion and accretion of like parts in a system, complexity is not improbable. A mundane thunderstorm can occur and add to or remove grains of sand on a beach increasing or decreasing the complexity of the system and there is little probability involved in this.
The improbability comes in when we add in the specificity. Both Dembski's patterns involving low probabilities of an archer hitting a tiny target and Behe's highly specified parts in an IC system that no other part but that one could do is where the improbability comes in.
Push that improbability term 2.5 inches to the right and we may have a working model. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Christopher D. Beling
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posted 31. May 2005 07:41
Hi Jerry. I thought this diagram was exactly the idea of Bill Dembski as stated in No Free Lunch - which is where I got it from (also the Design Inference).
With regard to your erosion model - is it not true that all configurations of sand (if specified mathematically) are all very very unlikely (improbable)to have occured by chance alone -i.e to have thrown any configuration of sand by chance? I have a feeling that we have a confusion here about what we mean by an improbable event. Perhaps its a semantic problem on the term Complexity - I believe (agreeing with Sal) that the terms "complexity" and "extreme improbability" are synonymous when we are defining what is CSI. Must get this cleared before further progress can be made.
Chris
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Stephen Wright
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Member # 195
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posted 31. May 2005 13:18
andyg asked,
“Using your formulation, do you think that the existence of exclusively L-amino acids is indicative of design, or that it is impossible to tell? In either case, explain how your model led to that conclusion.”
The probability for design would be very high and I would base that on the input of the target information being so specific and exclusive. The output of all left-handed amino acids requires biochemical command and control to be in place. With my own personal background in biochemistry being weak, it is still my understanding that to produce only a left-handed product, took putting a robust mechanism in place. It is the “aboutness” when a goal state is obtained, so definitively, that leads my opinion towards a design from mental computation and will-power enforcement. My model would see mental “work” as the cause.
Rather than defer design work to a self-aware external designer(s) or to random “findings” in a design space, followed by the mysterious process of self-org -- my worldview would see the primary “will-to-live” and primitive awareness as enough to achieve design effects. Seeing bio-design from blind forces or a single bio-architect – as low probabilities - it is suggested that it could be possible via a straightforward process. This occurs when a “mental grasping” of the information for a bio-solution is generated by an organism, or colony of organisms and enforced by intention – however independent of a state of self-awareness. All organisms are awash in their own information and that of their immediate environment.
Appending important life sustaining concepts together can generate novel conceptual formats, appropriate to the structured information, related to both the starting and goal states. I see beavers as figuring out dams and dam building and particular bacteria as discovering outboard motors. Lucky circumstances still may be important, but from an entropic point of view – living things provide their own computation and specificity to target states in a process of mental causation.
There need not be an overview of conscious awareness of this process, like we have in human minds, for it to be effective. Once an intention is embedded in specified information (making the specified information complex) it will be like an object oriented program and persist in effectiveness when used. I am just seeing the ability for mental causation, already acknowledged for humans, as extending backwards to the first moment of organic life.
quote:
“man has the power to establish real patterns in nature, the reality of which is manifested by the fact that their future implications extend indefinitely beyond the experience which they were originally known to control.” – Michael Polanyi – Personal Knowledge, page 37
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Salvador T. Cordova
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Member # 959
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posted 01. June 2005 00:14
quote:
Dembski's work purports to provide a mathematical tool to infer design. If his methodology can only work by appealing to human subjectivity as you seem to be saying, it is not useful.
That is very much what I am saying. The reason you can read this sentence is an appeal to human subjectivity.
Design in biology is hypothesized by ReMine and Dembski to communicate to us, the EF detects "masters of self promotion".
I beg to differ if that you feel it is not useful. If you feel nothing short of seeing God, or the Intelligent Designer in action before you would entertain the possiblity of intelligent design, then I respect your choice to consider our views as inadequate.
quote:
I have no idea how to encode such information in a molecule.
Here is a design at the molecular level encoded to create at "coincidence of conceptual and physical information", it fit nicely with Dembski formulation of specified complexity. Below is a good example of specified complexity at the molecular level. IBM logo written on Xenon atoms.
We have more than just something like IBM written with atoms in a cell, we have complete working, functional computer system equivalent to some of the world's most sophisticated computers, complete with Analog to Digital conversion, memory, error correction, compilers and operating systems -- the works.
quote:
Sal, I'm sorry to be blunt (and I assure you I am not attacking you personally, just your argument), but this quote, and the whole direction in which your argument is going is just warmed-over Paleyism, and as I said just now is simply begging the question. I think you can do better than that.
I'm afraid William Paley is winning the day in debates over biological design.
Payley's Watch Discovered
[ 01. June 2005, 00:20: Message edited by: Salvador T. Cordova ]
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 01. June 2005 00:35
quote:
Are we deleting B* on the complexity side or on the specification side? Your point is that B* does not exhibit complexity (because it can occur with high liklihood - e.g. in a regular crystal by natural law). In your reckoning then B* never makes it into the CSI category! However, my viewpoint was that B* contains enough information as a string to fulfill the complexity condition - but the specification (pattern) is too simple (as it exhibits regularity) - so that it is a specification (pattern) that signals caution. In short we need a regularity check (not the same thing as just being K-simple) in the above diagram. Is this "non-regularity check" to be on the complexity side or the specification side? Or is it just an independent condition?
Hi Christopher,
One of the problems with the term "regularity" is what do we mean, even in ID literature. As I've tried to show, "complexity" has multiple meanings, thus the word "regularity" has the same challenges.
First of all, "500 coins heads" exhibits "regularity" in the symbolic sense, but it is not caused by "regularity" in the sense of something caused by phyiscal law. A salt cristal exhibits "regularity" in the symbolic sense and by action of physical law.
However "500 coins heads" exhibits regularity only in the symbolic sense but not by the action of regular physical law. Thus the node in the explantory filter that checks for "regularity" is "regularity" being caused by physical law such as happens with salt crystals. There is no "regularity" from physcial laws that cause "regularity" to appear in coins. There is again some confusion here.
These threads, I hope, will help alleviate some of that. Bill Dembski has said that his recent writings don't use the Explanatory Filter (EF) diagrams (where "regularity" is part of the diagram) any more.
So to help clarify, we reject artifacts like salt that are caused by the regularity which physical law creates, but we do not reject artifacts like "500 coins heads", even though "500 coins heads" exhibit regularity in the symbols. There an unfortunate confusion of the context of the word "regularity".
The EF does not reject artifiacts soley on the fact that they have a symbolic structure that exhibits "regularity", it rejects artifacts that are attributed to arise from the "regularity" of physical law.
Unfortunately, we again run into definitional confusion. Perhaps, the term "inevitablity" instead of "regularity" should have been used in the EF diagram above....
[ 01. June 2005, 00:39: Message edited by: Salvador T. Cordova ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 01. June 2005 02:47
Yep. This is something that badly needs clearing up before we progress much further. Dembski made a mistake, IMHO (in my humble opinion) by not sliding that word improbability 3 inches to the right and as such this entire observation has become controversial because specificity then becomes a subjective concept that is not calculable. They openly (and very honestly) admit this right here in the ISCID Encyclopedia:
"Criticisms of Dembski's notion of specified complexity often target the notion of specification. Critics argue that it is a subjective concept, highly dependent on the observer's background knowledge and therefore not reliable as a scientific criterion."
So, we have to fix this now rather than just allow the concept to flounder and propagate in this way.
Specificity is easily calculated by allowing it to be the denominator in the odds of an event occurring. If the archer has 1 chance in 10^150 of hitting a tiny target then the specificity is 10^150. But it doesn't work that way with complexity.
If I place a load of gravel on my driveway and we consider this a system, then a rainstorm comes along and washes a third of the gravel out of the system down the hill, that system has decreased in complexity. But what the heck does that have to do with probabilities? Nothing. I can calculate the system before the event and after the event, but that's just the states of its existence and not probabilities of those states.
So Dembski was correct with that diagram and it contributes much to ID in that complexity and specificity must be present to infer design. But slide the term improbability over a couple of inches and it becomes an irrefutable contribution.
And want to express the complexity? Fine. Just express the term in bits of information and we have this as well. Someone point out where I am wrong here.
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andyg
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posted 01. June 2005 21:36
quote:
Here is a design at the molecular level encoded to create at "coincidence of conceptual and physical information", it fit nicely with Dembski formulation of specified complexity. Below is a good example of specified complexity at the molecular level. IBM logo written on Xenon atoms
That's not quite what we were talking about. I was talking about the possibility of creating a message within a molecule, not using an array of molecules (or xenon atoms) to spell out a word. And I don't know how to do that. I suppose I could synthesize a protein whose amino acid sequence would read out "SALVADQRISKEWL", but that would assume that I know that the life form I would be communicating with would use exactly those letters and language. But what you say below is that although the message is not written in English, it is there for all to see:
quote:
We have more than just something like IBM written with atoms in a cell, we have complete working, functional computer system equivalent to some of the world's most sophisticated computers, complete with Analog to Digital conversion, memory, error correction, compilers and operating systems -- the works.
quote:
That is very much what I am saying. The reason you can read this sentence is an appeal to human subjectivity.
I am thinking back to how our discussion started with respect to specified complexity, and how one can infer such properties (and therefore design) from looking at complicated biological objects where a Designer is in question, rather than dice or coins, where the Designer of the dice or coin arrays is clearly human.
Your argument seems to be - and correct me if I'm mistaken - that at bottom we have to rely on human subjectivity to see the conceptual information which is required to nail something down as designed.
So my question is this: If your argument boils down to Paleyism - looking at a cell and convincing yourself that something that complicated has to be designed - then why does one need to resort to Dembski's mathematics? How has that moved you on from Paley in the 19th century?
quote:
If you feel nothing short of seeing God, or the Intelligent Designer in action before you would entertain the possiblity of intelligent design, then I respect your choice to consider our views as inadequate.
That's not what I had in mind when I began this discussion. Now that you have kindly explained specified complexity to me in more detail, I'm hoping you (or Demsbki himself) can show me how one can gain an objective independent insight into conceptual information in an artifact without recourse to human subjectivity. If and only if you are saying that the only way to infer design is by a Paleyesque appeal to incredulity, then I would say that I would need better evidence than that. I was hoping that you could explain how Dembski's ideas can get me out of that quandary.
Your link to "Paley's watch discovered" is once more begging the question. In Paley's analogy we know the watch is designed because humans design watches. What features of the watch imply design independent of the fact that we know a great deal about humans and watches? If we follow through your arguments in these threads, we come up wanting.
[ 01. June 2005, 22:22: Message edited by: andyg ]
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 02. June 2005 02:25
Why do you think we have to look at human subjectivity to see design? Why don't you look at it from the aspect of science and math?
One computes the total information that nature could produce since its inception and then takes a mathematical look at the amount of information certain systems contain within nature. When we do, we find that nature could not have possibly formed some of these systems. I have to ask myself what did, fairies? David Copperfield? Nope. Wouldn't be prudent from my perspective.
You may have to present a cogent argument to the contrary and get past us light-weights if you think differently and hope to make it to Dembski.
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Christopher D. Beling
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posted 02. June 2005 08:19
Hi: Jerry and Andy: I was discussing this "subjectivity" issue at length with a pro-ID astrophysicist colleague of mine this afternoon. What is it that makes for the specificition of life? I said it was that life has a remarkable "function+structure" not found elsewhere. He responded the planets possess function+structure too (beautiful orbital motion and nice structure - Sir Isaac Newton was impressed too!). [We agreed that the universe has a deeper level of design (and probably CSI too) that permiates the physical- but did not allow this as a digression]. I was challenged - but then responded, - what really makes for the specification of life is REPLICATION. I pointed out that no human engineer had yet made a self replicating system. We humans could however imagine what such a system would look like - a replicating computer - a computer at the center of a factory that was programmed to operate mining equipment that would dig all the necessary metal and silicon ores from the ground around the factory and process them (using computer controlled machinary) to form the components of an identical factory at some distance away - with a similar computer controlling it. When through wear and tear the factory broke down, other factories would be still functioning and replicating - programmed to pass on the "construct a factory" information. I.E. we conceive of a humanly designed/constructed self replicating system. My colleague responded - YES, but such a system could only have been instigated by human intelligence! TRUE, The ability to SELF-REPLICATE (inclusive of drawing energy and materials from the environment) is then (we both concluded) poignant to what makes specification indicative of design.
Moreover this SELF-REPLICATING attribute - is it not fundamental to the nature of what constitues true CSI? and of fundamental importance here in discussing the 4th law. Remember the 4th law is to do with the time-wise invarience of CSI - thus the ability to REPLICATE and in doing so pass on CSI to the next generation (in spite of the degenerative nature of the 2nd law) is surely of relevance and importance. We could even go as far to say that the 4th law itself is the specification of what constitutes CSI, for CSI is the quantity being conserved.
[ 02. June 2005, 08:41: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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Christopher D. Beling
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posted 02. June 2005 10:02
. quote:
But slide the term improbability over a couple of inches and it becomes an irrefutable contribution.
Jerry - From this statement I guess I am worried that you still have a different interpretation of the terms 'complexity' and 'specification'. I agree that 'specification' is the weakest point of Bill Dembski's EF (complexity-specification criterion) but this does not necessarily mean that he is wrong. [It could also mean a need for strengthening the weakness) From your posts I can understand why you think he is wrong - i.e. because you have a different definition/understanding of the term 'specification'. By 'specification' you seem to mean a highly improbable targeted event - but that is CSI itself - not 'specification' in the now normal definition of that word (i.e. the sense originally defined by Dembski)- which only means having a DETACHABALE PATTERN and is nothing to do with probability. One can have a 'specification' without improbability - an example would be the string SOS. This of course specifies someone is in trouble, but the letter combination is not too improbable and could have occured with reasonable liklihood by chance (say in a game of scrabble).
quote:
If I place a load of gravel on my driveway and we consider this a system, then a rainstorm comes along and washes a third of the gravel out of the system down the hill, that system has decreased in complexity. But what the heck does that have to do with probabilities? Nothing. I can calculate the system before the event and after the event, but that's just the states of its existence and not probabilities of those states
The exact mathematical configuration of the load of gravel before and after the rainstorm can be given by a set of numbers - the x,y,z coordinates of every particle of gravel! After the rainstorm there are the same number of gravel particles - its just that their coordinates have changed. The mathmatical configuration of the system has changed. I think you would agree that both the initial and final configurations are both very very improbably to have occured by chance - i.e. here in the now standard (i.e. original Bill Demsbski) defined sense both states are classified as 'complex'. This means that if you were to shake up all the gravel particles from scratch it is highly improbable that you would get either the initial or final configurations. It may be best to agree with Sal that we should use the term 'improbability' rather than 'complexity' at the present - since complexity has (as we have all agreed) other connotations too. Do hope you can agree to these term usages - If it helps I would agree to use 'improbability' rather than 'complexity'
One can have improbable (complex) events that are not specified [i.e. your gravel pile]
One can have specified (target) events that are non improbable [i.e. the SOS example]
CSI events however, are both improbable and specified (targeted) - we aree on this
[ 02. June 2005, 19:33: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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andyg
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posted 02. June 2005 12:56
Jerry:
quote:
When we do, we find that nature could not have possibly formed some of these systems.
How do you know that?
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