rationalskepticism.org

Царь Славян wrote:

You missed the step before i.e. the step whereby the designer decides the fitness function and thus sets a goal or, with evolutionary model, where the environment has been formed without agency.

I DID NOT MISS ANY STEPS! LEARN TO READ! CAN YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!!?!?!?!?

PART 2 – THE FITNESS FUNCTION

In case of the computer search, this is the part where the designer sets up the fitness function to select some sequences over others.

In case of natural evolution, the nature itself and it's properties decide which DNA sequence gets selected over others.


THERE
ARE
NO
MISSING
STEPS!!!!!!!!!!

THEY
ARE
TWO
IDENTICAL
LISTS

NOW POINT OUT THE DIFFERENCE OR SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!!!!!!

In one list there is an implied designer and there is intent and in the other there is no designer and no intent. Where there is a designer with intent then we use the word "goal".

So the lists are not identical in step 2 where it has the wording "Asign value of fitness" (sic) . With the designer version then the step is actually,

"Designer assigns value of fitness to specific sequences."

and with the unintentional then the fitness function is,

"Blindly eliminate unfit sequences leaving residual fit sequences."

They are the opposite sides of the same coin but one is flipped by a designer.

Using the example of the salinity of the sea then it is either a) the designer sets the salinity by causing salt content of the water or, b) the salt content of the water is not a goal but a result of what salts are available from rocks.

And what's the physical difference in these two processes?

The intent of the designer i.e. what goal they had in mind.

Goal in the English language very strongly implies agency, pre-planning, pre-definition and so on. What happens with natural selection is not equivalent to a computer search because of this pre-definition of goal by an agent.

So basicly you are saying that there is no difference except semantics? What is the PHYSICAL difference?

The "PHYSICAL difference" is that one has a designer in it i.e. an agent of some kind and the other doesn't. This is not a semantic difference but a rather large difference.

Then we are at an impasse because you call it a goal which implies agency. In your argument you thus hope to sway the view towards agency.

No, I want to show you that both processes are PHYSICALLY IDENTICAL.

Except one has a designer and the other doesn't.

Then you should be able to show me how easy this is given we have "Mount Rushmore". You should be able to explain exactly what the "information" is.

The faces of the people is teh information.

What if Mount Rushmore was accurate carvings of plants ? Or what if Mount Rushmore was a carving of a mountain ?.

Equally your formula should be able to trivially show how to measure the information with napped flints. I think this would be very helpful to the people who study prehistory to allow them to quickly sort naturally occurring artefacts from man-made ones.

Yup, it would do wonders.

Bingo - that is the problem that these archaeology people have. By cut marks in animal bones and by the presence of discarded napped flints its clear that sharp stone edges were used on animals and that these would crafted but you seem to have discovered some way of readily identifying design from random for these researchers. I imagine that they would be interested if your algorithms were trustworthy.

How do you know that all those items were not there simply by chance?

Circular argument is circular.

Very easy to answer this - SETI doesn't presume a designer for each anomalous signal but stringently re-checks and has so far discarded all to date. They err on the side of caution.

Neither does ID. Does ID claim that EVERYTHING is designed?

Well if it is anything to do with bacteria then this has a massive impact in our world as all the life of this world that breathes oxygen is only here because of bacteria. Without bacteria there would be no Trees, no animals, no humans, nothing bigger than a few hundred micrometers.

So the implications of designers mucking with bacteria are astounding and critical to the tree of life on Earth. This is their planet. They made it and they keep it alive.

So though ID may not claim "EVERYTHING is designed" what they do claim has an impact on everything that lives on this planet.

Intelligent Design supporters have a designer in mind and stick it onto selective biological features and then argue like crazy and refuse to accept the consensus view that they are doing it wrong. They presume agency and so do not err on the side of caution.

Wrong. ID proponents don't presume a designer also. Which designer am I presuming?

When you say designed then you claim an agent of some kind. With respect to this topic, with some this is Aliens and with others this is God. Obviously both of those sound kind of silly so those that support ID generally stop at "designed" so they don't sound silly.

Wrong - if one person does something and everyone can't reproduce this are you then saying that the majority view is irrelevant ? That's stupid.

If they can't reproduce it then that's a different story. I said that majority OPINION is irrelevant, not majority EXPERIMENTS. Learn the difference.

I'm assuming that when scientists give opinions that count then this comes from experience they have had with experiments rather than the opinion of the Man on the Clapham Common Bus. Learn the difference. Scientists are especially subjected to being hoisted by their own petard by the vision of hindsight.

Trees are found in nature - not "wood" and the difference is that wood is processed by an agent with a purpose. Ore is found in nature - very rarely free "metal". Metal is ore that is processed for a purpose.

Bacteria flagellum do not use "processed" materials but materials that are commonly found in nature.

Proteins that make the bacterial flagellum are no found in nature, except in living organisms. And what if I had a table from unprocessed wood and iron?

Without tooling then you start to have an artefact that becomes harder and harder to determine if there was any intent i.e. agency behind it.

Graphite is chemical related to diamond - the physics of the presentation also matters. With Mount Rushmore then the issue is that the National Parks Service says that the "granite was very resistant, eroding one inch every 10,000 years." thus we look at how the surface has weathered and we see that the natural wearing deviates. Thus the probability is there is a design.

Maybe it formed faces by chance?

Maybe, equally maybe, if it was a mountain face that was carved into the shape of a mountain face, how do we tell that from chance ?.

Why are you continually bringing up an example that everyone says is designed and has clear marks of design i.e. no one says that Mount Rushmore is natural ? If anyone said Mount Rushmore was naturally occurring then it is easy to show the abnormalities - scree that as been blasted off by explosive shocks, and a surface finish that is wrong for the time periods.

Becasue I want to show you teh features of designed objects and how do we tell them from non-designed ones.

...and equally I'm showing how to do this by looking at the toolchain in use rather than through the use of mathemagic of statistics.

So there are better designs such that if the Intelligent Designer spent a bit more time they could have done better ?

I could say so.

So there could be many other sequences that are equally as good as this one sequence, perhaps even better ?. If this is true then this rapidly improves the probability of this one sequence being common and a probably likely outcome.

I think we've already had fun with that - when I throw a 6 sided die with my eyes closed then it comes up with a "1" and you thus say that was "design".

The chances of any number coming up by cahnce is 1:1. But as I said earlier some sequences are more prevalent then others, thus are more probable than others.

Without examining the outcomes of all the probabilities then you can't make claims about the probability of this one outcome. As many others have said any sequence is equally likely by chance but the search space is massive. Other than yourself though, no one says the process of Evolution is by chance.

But it is explained by natural selection. Once again you have latched onto the word "chance" as tightly as you have the word "goal".

Bit if it did evolve by chance and natural selection then you are invoking an algorithm, and the NFL theorem clearly states that algorithms don't produce any new information except which random chance could. So you are displacing the problem to a higher order search.

No, and in fact this allows us to be able to justify any information we find because as everyone says any sequence is equally likely by chance so all possible information can be produced by chance.

Again with no intended goal then no search is done. It is only with a designer than needs a specific (or one of a set of) searches as it is only a designer that has a desire for specific outcome. We call this outcome a "goal".