I haven’t yet decided on a focus question for next summer, but am considering returning to the theme from 2006: “Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?”

An interesting twist on this might be to explore the question from the position of Darwin’s contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace.

But the active information pre-loaded in a search is virtually guaranteed to be less than log|?|, so it would seem that searches virtually always generate information.

what if the search is for something that doesn’t exist.

Information output 1- “haven’t found it yet”

2- “haven’t found it yet”

3- “haven’t found it yet”

.
.
.
10^100000000- “haven’t found it yet”

Concepts like “search” do not apply to blind watchmaker scenarios.

Well Rob, as far as I can tell their math says it is impossible for evolutionary searches to generate information.

That’s incorrect. Their framework includes three information measures, all defined as properties of searches. So unless the evolutionary search generates another search, the question of whether the evolutionary search generates information doesn’t even make sense according to M&D’s definitions.

If we really want to measure the information output of a search, we’ll have to come up with our own information measure in order to do so. A natural definition would be log|Ω|, where |Ω| is the size of the search space. After all, for typical searches, we have no idea where the search will end, so each potential outcome has a probability of 1/|Ω|. Note that this is how Dembski came up with a value of 133 bits for the target phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL in his book No Free Lunch.

But the active information pre-loaded in a search is virtually guaranteed to be less than log|Ω|, so it would seem that searches virtually always generate information. If this result bothers you, then welcome to the terminological problems that surround M&D’s framework.

If you want to know what M&D’s work entails, you have to look at the math. Labels like “information” and “search” are misleading when applied to the concepts in their framework, so superficial reading is bound to result in misunderstanding.

Dembski and Marks: a search of m steps on a space Ω can be modeled by a probability measure on Ω^m, thus any subset of Ω^m can be searched for.

DiEb: in this model, only few subsets of Ω^m represent feasible searches.

Thanks for the links to your students papers. The paper on mimickry got me thinking about something.

Do you happen to know if any experiments been done to determine if peppered moths can change into colors such as red, yellow, green, etc?

I ask because I find it peculiar that peppered moths would only change from white to black. In fact, I would suggest that a peppered moth’s inability to change into any other color would demonstrate empirical support for Behe’s edge of evolution.

It would confirm that organisms are limited in what they can do, suggesting each organism was designed to fill specific niches; in the case of the peppered moth, that they only required periodic, reversible change from white to black pigmentation to maintain equilibrium in their particular niche.

I would go further to say NS cannot help an organism break out of its adaptive landscape, confirming the observation that adaptive mechanisms have no relation to historical evolutionary mechanisms.

When you have a moment to spare, your comments would be appreciated.

I don’t know what you’re referring to when you speak of my model and my falsification.

Are yoiu saying that you are one of those intellectual cowards without a position to defend and also thinks their ignorance of ID is some sort of refutation?

That figures…

And speaking about the real world why is it that the anti-IDists cannot fond any evidence in the real world to support their position?

Should be interesting…

before A. Wiles, there existed “proofs” of Fermat’s Last Theorem. That these were wrong was independent from the validity of this theorem

OTOH, when someone claims to have a squaring of the circle, you know that he is wrong, as this is impossible.

So, to what category does Marks’s and Dembskis’s Horizontal New Free Lunch theorem belong?

Neither – nor: I think that I’ve shown that it is a somewhat nonsensical statement, right for a guess, but wrong for even a simple search.

I’ve just perused the papers. It’s great seeing passionate young minds at work!

I commend your opening up the forum to this practise, because no matter how many rabid types try to shut down a conversation, a conversation is required and can be learnt from. It’s after the best arguments are put forward that decisions can be adequately made.

I note that it was 2006 that these students posted their work. Have you continued with this course recently or was this a once-off?

Progression in science and philosophy continues to churn forward and newer arguments and (hopefully) resolution to aspects of older ones may be advanced in others. I always like to read the work of up-and-coming researchers.