Category: Comp. Sci. / Eng.
Biological Neg-Entropy
| June 28, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Intelligent Design |
Some of you might have heard that Jonathan Schaeffer and his team at the U. of Alberta recently solved the game of checkers. It made big news in the computer science world. I first met Jon at the First Computer Olympiad in London (organized by the famous David Levy of chess and computer-chess fame) at… more
Craig Venter – 18 months to 4th generation biofuels
| May 30, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Intelligent Design, Science |
Awesome. The alternative biofuel part of the talk starts at 13 minutes. I highly recommend watching it all. more
Bogus Computer Simulations
| May 27, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Religion |
This one, published by New Scientist, really takes the cake. From the article: God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved. By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish… The model assumes… that a small… more
Gambler’s ruin is Darwin’s ruin
| May 3, 2008 | Posted by scordova under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
The same day I first watched “Expelled” in theaters, I also watched the movie “21″. The movie “21″ is based on the true story of MIT students who made a fortune in Las Vegas casinos through the use of mathematics. The real story behind the movie began with an associate of Claude Shannon by the… more
Can Computation and Computational Algorithms Produce Novel Information?
| February 14, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Informatics |
As some UD readers are aware, one of my interests is artificial-intelligence computer programming, especially games-playing AI (here, here, and here). In producing retrograde endgame databases for the game of checkers, with massive computational resources (two CPUs performing approximately a billion integer operations each per second over a period of two months, for a total… more
Are Those Without Formal Academic Training in Evolutionary Biology Justified in Challenging the “Experts”?
| December 19, 2007 | Posted by GilDodgen under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism |
This is a recurring challenge that most recently reared its head in a comment concerning my essay, Why Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and Engineers Tend to be More Skeptical of Darwinian Claims. The argument goes like this (as presented by the commenter in the link provided above): The majority of degreed computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians… more
Why Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and Engineers Tend to be More Skeptical of Darwinian Claims
| December 17, 2007 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism, Science |
Larry Moran’s presentation in a comment in Granville Sewell’s UD post, I found not particularly persuasive, for the following reasons. I’m not interested in definitions of science; I’m interested in how stuff actually works. I’m perfectly amenable to being convinced that the complexity, information content, and machinery of living systems can be explained by stochastic… more
Pioneer of non-Darwinian, Intelligent Evolutionary Design passes away
| October 2, 2007 | Posted by scordova under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Informatics |
[Comp Sci. /Eng, Informatics] I felt compelled to offer a tribute….. A great pioneer of Intelligent Evolutionary Design and non-Darwinian evolutionary computing passed away September 20, 2007. See this Washington Post Article: Ryszard Michalski; Shaped How Machines Learn. Michalzki created the notion of Intelligent Evolutionary Design and advanced the hypothesis of non-Darwinian evolutionary computing. From… more
Real Simulations, Cartoon Simulations, and Evolutionary Informatics
| September 22, 2007 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism, Informatics |
Computer programs that purport to validate the grand claims of Darwinian (i.e., chance and necessity) biological evolution are a hoot. In early August my aerospace R&D company sent me off to Livermore, CA for a four-day course in using a finite element analysis (FEA) simulation program called LS-DYNA, originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.… more
LSD and the Relevance of Computer Simulations to Biological Evolution
| July 12, 2007 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism |
No, not lysergic acid diethylamide, but LS-Dyna, perhaps the world’s most sophisticated engineering computer simulation program, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, originally for the development of nuclear weapons. I’m studying LS-Dyna feverishly, since my company is sending me off to LS-Dyna school in Livermore, CA at the end of this month. I have a… more
Darwin dissed by doctors, and a design revolution continues at MIT
| May 2, 2007 | Posted by scordova under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Culture, Education |
One of New York’s foremost brain surgeons, Dr. Michael Egnor, has repeatedly pointed out why Darwinism is irrelevant to modern medicine. See: Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution?. And it turns out, Michael Egnor’s claims are being supported by an uncomfortable admission by Catriona J. MacCallum, the Senior Editor at PLoS… more
Evolving Hardware
| March 29, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Here’s an article on evolving hardware developed by Norwegian scientists. Favorite quote: “Every creature in nature is a product of evolution, and did I mention that creationism is just bull? What the team has done is add evolution to hardware (Norwegian), all hardware that you and I have used so far is made the creationism… more
The Sound of the Genetic Code Exploding
| February 10, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
Scientists Discover Parallel Codes In Genes “These parallel codes were probably exploited during evolution to allow genes to support a wide range of signals to regulate and modify biological processes in cells.” says Shalev Itzkovitz at The Weizmann Institute of Science. more
‘The ID Files’, Interviews with Salvador Cordova, Michael Behe and more …
| February 8, 2007 | Posted by leebowman under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Intelligent Design |
SciPhi guy Jason Renie has put up a free online Audiobook, actually a set of four interviews with proponents and detractors of ID. The other two Interviews are with Michael Shermer and Nick Matzke. Go here. Comments I just posted at the site: “First let me applaud Jason Rennie for some interesting dialogues. In his… more
Programmable Matter: One Step Closer
| January 24, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Intelligent Design, Science |
An article in the February 2007 Scientific American titled Molecular Lego talks about bis-amino acids and bis-peptides. These are synthetic amino acids and peptide chains formed from them. more
US Leads in ID Belief, Trails in Astrology Belief
| January 18, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
I read this Huffington post which notes that the U.S. leads Europe by quite a margin in those who reject orthodox evolution as scientific fact. They go on to an unsupported conclusion that this means the U.S. must be trailing in scientific and engineering accomplishments. Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire! more
Venter: Cracking The Ocean Code
| December 29, 2006 | Posted by Dave S. under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Science |
I just watched Cracking the Ocean Code on the Discovery Science Channel last night. It’s on again at 3pm Eastern Time today and tomorrow. Really amazing. Venter basically circumnavigated the globe stopping every 200 miles to sample the microscopic life in the ocean which he is now shotgun sequencing back at his lab. In the… more
William Dembski and 3 IDers cited in a significant OOL peer-reviewed article by Trevors and Abel
| October 30, 2006 | Posted by scordova under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Intelligent Design, Science, Self-Org. Theory |
Accepted July 2006 Physics of Life Reviews [Update: thanks to Todd for a link to the full paper:] Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models [Update: IDers Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and R.L. Olsen were cited as well!! They wrote the book in 1984 which is considered the beginning of the modern ID movement. Also,… more
The Definition of Life
| October 18, 2006 | Posted by Patrick under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Darwinism, Evolution, Science, Self-Org. Theory |
http://www.ffame.org/sbenner/cochembiol8.672-689.pdf The opening discussion: To decide whether life has a common chemical plan, we must decide what life is. A panel assembled by NASA in 1994 was one of many groups to ponder this question. The panel defined life as a ‘chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution’ [16]. This definition, which follows an earlier definition… more
Quantum Leap In Protein Folding Calculation
| October 3, 2006 | Posted by Patrick under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Evolution, Intelligent Design |
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918202123.htm Applying techniques derived from classical and quantum physics calculations may radically reduce the time it takes to simulate the way that proteins fold. more