How to become IDer in two weeks
| October 5, 2009 | Posted by niwrad under Informatics, Intelligent Design |
This opportunity is dedicated to Darwinists/evolutionists or any ID denier who sincerely desire to become convinced IDer but failed the target until today. It is a great opportunity that unfortunately Darwin could not get at his times (you will understand why at the end).
First off, no worry the method is entirely free of charge. No books of ID theorists to buy. No lectures or schools are requested. No need to travel or participate to meetings or seminars. You can stay quietly where you are now, before the screen of your computer.
Some analyses have shown that the difficulty of understanding ID and its concepts (CSI, IC, etc.) consists in the following aspects. (1) Usually people simply look at the complex systems (where CSI, IC … are) in a passive manner, without any active stance. For example evolutionary biologists look at the biological realities but they don’t try to construct them (yes I know genetic engineering tries to do something like that but one cannot say properly that it starts from nothing). To look at is too easy. (2) Reading ID books or attending lectures sure can help yes but also here the participation is passive, no warranty that at the end a real understanding was achieved. To read and hear is too easy. (3) To discuss ID/evo issues with friends, colleagues and debaters can help but often is counterproductive: each one remains on his position, even more convinced than before, given that discussion may invigorate one’s wrong convictions. To discuss is too easy. (4) To study complex systems (both the artificial and natural ones) can help but again a thing is to study, another thing is to construct them. To study is too easy. (5) To write documents, articles, peer reviewed papers and whatever about complex systems can help (it is sure more demanding than to read, speak or discuss) but however it remains always the possibility that one continues to believe that such systems can evolve after all. To write is too easy.
At this point you wonder: no reading, no writing, no discussion, no study, no analysis of the systems. What is the method then? To tell it in a word, the method is based on design. Yes, the principle of the method is that to really understand design one must personally design. It is not enough to do the above activities. (I know you are disappointed.)
Of course a good example of design would be engineering in all its specialties. Unfortunately almost all fields of engineering are inaccessible to laymen for many reasons. But the good news is that there is a field that is theorically and practically available (at least at a basic level) to almost all people (or at least to scientific-minded people as most ID deniers are): computer science. Our suggested patent-pending method to become IDer is based on computer programming. Developing programs gives ID refuters a lot of advantages to learn ID.
(1) Computer programming is an activity where, differently from literature, philosophy, journalism and so on, a severe control overarches all the design cycle. In programming errors matter, also the minor ones are never condoned. This is good discipline for the student, to be always forced to correct his errors. If you write a book filled with errors, no worry, it will be published the same. If you write a program with one error nothing works. This is the difference between storytelling and programming. Usually there are at least two kinds of control or filter: at compilation time and at run-time. Any program works only if it passes the two filters. Extremely useful is to try to find the causes of a failure or wrong behavior of your program. In programming you will always face this hard reality: you are the only source of all functional bits.
(2) Computer programs don’t arise by unguided evolution. They entail CSI and only intelligence can create CSI. Whether software were generable by mean of randomness and machines, software houses wouldn’t need to pay legions of expensive programmers. When you are programming you see directly your intelligence at work. Eventually other programmers can help you but no other unintelligent thing can do the job for you.
(3) To develop programs is a good exercise to learn CSI, IC, nested functional hierarchies, sub-functions, structures, dependences among parts, meta-information, libraries, etc. For example, to test if a particular sub-module is IC at the functional level one can easily delete some of its instructions in the program sources and see what happens. You can have a raw measure of the CSI of your program looking at the size of its source (or its binary executable). More instructions you write more CSI and personal gratification.
(4) Computer programming is an information processing job. Therefore is particularly apt to understand what happens in the biological cells, where information is processed and instructions are run by the molecular machinery. Cells don’t work according to storytelling, rather according to programming.
(5) Last but not least you can even simulate random mutations. You can insert some random error in the source and see if such variation is functionally beneficial (how neo-Darwinism theory hopes). Eventually if you want a better randomness you can ask a (non programmer) friend to introduce a blind change in your code. The analogy between human software and biological code is good, so directly testing random mutations in the former can give you an idea of their results in the latter.
What is necessary to start? Of course a computer but you have it already. The second step is the choice of the programming language. In the history of informatics hundreds of programming languages have been developed. All have pro and cons. My personal advice nowadays is to adopt Perl or PHP. By the way Perl is particularly useful in genomic research. Someone even claims that Perl “saved the human genome project” (see here).
Perl and PHP are modern high level language, running on every operating system, relatively easy to learn and in the same time very powerful. One can freely download their compilers and on-line manuals from their web-sites. Read the initial chapters of the manual (not the entire manual). After the installation on your computer you can just start writing you first “Hello world” program. If you will be insisting with constancy every day after two weeks it is likely you will have developed a functioning program more complex than that where to experiment variations. In any case your awareness that, when bits are involved and instructions have to be run by processors, randomness is only destructive will be increased. Besides you will see with your own eyes that in informatics not a single functional bit is gratis but must come from the intelligence of a programmer. As a consequence, given the analogy between informatics and biology, eventually you will pass from the “chance and necessity” unguided evolution side to the ID side. Congratulations! You are welcome!!
42 Responses to How to become IDer in two weeks
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Mr Niwrad,
Thank you for answering clearly. I appreciate your definiteness when so many equivocate.
I think you are wrong about whether a rule matrix can be populated with probabilities instead of certainties. In the abstract, it is easy to imagine and analyze the behavior of such an object, inquire whether the probabilistic nature can be distinguished from noise in the channel, and many other interesting observations.
We can also observe that in practice the implementation of the genetic code by the machinery of the cell is not perfect. Protein assembly errors do happen. The map is not the territory. Google “aaRS isoleucine valine error” and look at p 36 of the book that Google brings up in Google Books, Translation mechanisms By Jacques Lapointe.
On the subject of mapping only 15 amino acids, I’m asking you to imagine a form of life that only needs 15 amino acids. So a map that only contains 15 is fine. For example, suppose that there used to be only one ancestral map, which mapped 22 different amino acids, but our cells are a reduction of that ancestral map, while mitochondria are another reduction.
I’m not sure what mechanism you think exists that prevents a physical, material system which can be be related to one abstraction from changing such that it is now related to another abstract system. The system doesn’t “know” it is related to an abstraction. My laptop has a CPU that is related to the abstraction of a Turing machine. It can be destroyed by a cosmic ray, nonetheless. A field programmable gate array can be arranged to be related to the abstraction of a Turing machine, and still reprogrammed. Being related to an abstraction, even a powerful abstraction, doesn’t offer any protection from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Therefore, I don’t see how you can maintain that all the genetic codes we see today in the world _must_ have been independently designed to be exactly what they are today. And if these maps _can_ change, there is the opening for evolution.
SpitfireIXA, #29
Are you suggesting that Microsoft Windows could be simplified and still maintain all of its features, including compatibility with previous versions? If so, I suggest you offer your services to Mr. Ballmer.
I would also like to see you simplify the EU regulatory body while retaining its functions within all of the independant countries.
And while I agree that the US Tax Code could be simpler, I think you’ll have trouble defending your argument that is came about by design. If you’re looking for an example of cumulative selection outside of the biological sciences, this would be a good one.
cam:
Yes. Same with the EU and the Tax Code.
Okay, I hope you’re joking. I’d admit that there’d be humor in it if you were.
Therefore, parsimony does not indicate design better than complexity.
Cam:
Keep in mind also that complexity must be paired with specificity to indicate design.
Nakashima #31
Thank you for your always challenging and interesting remarks. You are a person that the ID movement would be glad to have on board (and by the way I don’t consider impossible that you in the future will be entirely on our side).
Here I am not sure to understand your point. I said that rule matrices (which specify codes) must be populated by constant values, not probabilities. The issue of my post was focused on the usefulness of computer programming to have an idea of what happens inside the biological systems. When a programmer must specify a code, usually he fills an array or hash with constants or eventually inserts them into a file or library module. Here probabilities don’t matter, only certainties. May be you mean the probability of the random arise of a code. You know that for me this probability is null.
Abstract models are near perfect per se but when they are implemented in matter entropy intervenes and errors happen. No wonder about that, it’s everyone everyday experience.
I don’t know what would be the technical consequences of a 15 or 22 amino acids life. I suspect the repercussions would be many and deep. However it seems clear to me that these considerations are frameworked into an ID perspective.
The system doesn’t “know” it is related to an abstraction but the designer of the system must know, otherwise he couldn’t design it!
Of course. The relation to an abstract model is a must at the design level but at run time it doesn’t protect against entropy and all its harmful effects.
Any engineering variation in an ultra complex information processing system has to be designed, except the changes that the system is able to do by itself . . . according to possibilities that were frontloaded into the system just from the beginning by the designer!
Mr Niwrad,
Thank you very much for your kind words.
Here is an example of a code where you might use probabilities as entries. In cryptography, it is important to disguise the letter (and bigram and trigram)frequencies of a substitution cipher as much as possible, since these frequencies are the easist path to solving the cipher. Let us say that E is 10 times more frequent than Q. I construct a cipher where E is probabilistically mapped to 10 byte codes, but Q is mapped to only one. In this way I disquise the identities of E and Q.
I bring this up only to point out that a matrix with probabilities may have some uses in different computer applications. Related to the subject of evolution, there are also Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, in which an array or martrix is populated with probabilities which are updated as the algorithm is run. EDAs can be a very compact way of representing an entire population. For example, an EDA WEASEL (everyone’s favorite example) would start with an array 28 entries long and each entry would be a set of 27 probabilities, one for each possible character. In the first generation, each character in each space has the same probability, 1/27. When the algorithm has worked for a while, the probabilities have changed such that in slot 1 the probability of M is now higher than all the other letters, etc. (Yes, I am skipping how you change the probabilities based on fitness!)
I think if accept that physical processes can change aspects of the code, you are open to evolution of the code from a simpler state to a more complex state. This strikes me as a frontloading/TE kind of position, as you say design time vs run time. Abiogenesis is design time and evolution is run time. I’m not going to push you too hard on that now.
Nakashima #36
may be I must clear a misunderstanding. I agree perfectly with you that in science probability matrices do exist and are used to model many phenomena. For example in mathematics there is the theory of Markov chains, which are stochastic processes based on probabilistic transition matrices (the passage from a state to the next one is not deterministic because depends on a probability). Therefore I don’t deny at all probability matrices (or arrays). Simply I deny that the genetic code is a probability vector. In the translation process the passage from an RNA codon to the codified amino acid doesn’t depend on a probability but on a fixed rule.
If with “more complex” state you mean “more organized” then the passage to more organization always implies the intervention of intelligence (because organization implies CSI). To try returning to the issue of my post, when you write software you are organizing data, processes and events. There is no other way to organize things than to apply intelligence. Without intelligence all things go unavoidably towards disorder, that is exactly in the opposite direction of organization. You say “abiogenesis is design time and evolution is run time”. Here I could again agree with you, if you concede that evolution has only a passive role, insofar it develops only the possibilities that at design time were inserted in the systems. No doubt ultra complex systems (as the biological ones) have large potentialities of variation. In the informatics terms we could say that the biological software is highly configurable and parametrical. Moreover many configuration changes are triggerable by environmental events. All these aspects can be grouped under the name “evolution”. No one denies that organisms change. What ID denies is that changes implying increase in organization might arise thank to randomness and laws only.
Mr Niwrad,
Without intelligence all things go unavoidably towards disorder, that is exactly in the opposite direction of organization.
I fear you have returned to an assertion that we know is not true. As a general point, we know that a local increase in organization can be traded for a larger increase in entropy throughout the larger system. Take an example of the Sun/Earth where massive increases in entropy in the Sun drive modest amounts of compleity and organization here at the surface of the Earth. Or take individual chemical reactions that create complex results but also heat, or water or some other high entropy product. The total entropy of the reaction products may have increased, but the increase is unevenly distributed.
Take an example of the Sun/Earth where massive increases in entropy in the Sun drive modest amounts of compleity and organization here at the surface of the Earth.
The sun shines on eight other planets in this solar system. Where is their increase in organization?
If the hypothesis is that increases in entropy drive complexity and organization, how would we test that? It sounds like something we should be able to repeat.
Mr ScottAndrews,
re the other 7 planets, whatever it is it is. Do you deny that the organization and complexity of the surface of the Earth is driven by radiation from the Sun?
Think about Miller-Urey type experiments. A small yield of amino acids for large energy inputs. Some fraction of the energy helped build the amino acids, most got radiated away as waste heat.
Nakashima:
Do you deny that the organization and complexity of the surface of the Earth is driven by radiation from the Sun?
No. Neither do I deny that automobiles are driven by fuel. Shall we reason that the energy stored in petroleum caused the organization of metal and other materials into automobiles?
I maintain that unintelligent self-organization is an optimistic fantasy. But this hypothesis – “we know that a local increase in organization can be traded for a larger increase in entropy throughout the larger system” – why not test it six ways from Sunday and see what sort of organization results?
Take an example of the Sun/Earth where massive increases in entropy in the Sun drive modest amounts of compleity and organization here at the surface of the Earth.
Modest complexity being DNA, human intellect, millions of life forms, Shakespeare, etc. What would be an example of immodest complexity?
On thermodynamics and its relations with ID/evo I just posted a new article today.
Please eventually post your comments about there. Thank you.