Mathematically Defining Functional Information In Biology

_{January 28, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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Lecture by Kirk Durston, Biophysics PhD candidate, University of Guelph

[youtube XWi9TMwPthE nolink]

Click here to read the Szostak paper referred to in the video.

HT to UD subscriber bornagain77 for the video and the link to the paper.

Comments

R0b, You are asking us to establish that 2 + 2 = 4. The basic biology textbooks describes the transcription and translation process. Any good biology textbook will give the history of the discovery process. That establishes the claim that DNA is complex, information and specifies a function. The fact that no one has ever given an example of this happening anywhere else except for human activity establishes the fact that it is unique and that nature does not have the power to do it. Or else there would be an example of it shoved down our throats. The fact that you use diamonds and others use thunder storms shows that no example has been found. So in my two previous paragraphs I have established that DNA is functional complex specified information and that the only other place it exists it with humans. QED.jerry_{January 31, 2009
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Prof_P.Olofsson, "As for logic, what do you think about Kirk’s claims that “ID is 10^80000 times more probable?” " You missed my comment that all that objectors can seem to come up with is to quibble over a zero or two. I will settle for 10^800 or if push comes to shove how about 10^8. Or how about plain old 10. I can just see it now, "World Famous Statistician say ID is 10 times more likely than naturalistic methods." The next headline would be "Police still have no clues as to what happened to World Famous Statistician."jerry_{January 31, 2009
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KD @135
A distinguishing feature of intelligence is its ability to produce significant levels of functional information. Natural processes can produce very low levels of functional information within the ‘noise’ of random events. Intelligence, however, can produce effects that show up as extremely large anomalies within the background noise of natural processes. This artifact of intelligence can be used as an identifier for ID and the anomalies can be quantified using measures of functional complexity and/or functional information (the two are equivalent).
KD, thank you for coming here to clarify your presentation. I do have one question related to the above. From your paper and presentation, I'm unable to find any support for this claim. You appear to be assuming your conclusion. The whole point of design detection is to determine if life is designed. That means we need to prove that CSI (or functional information, in your case) cannot arise from natural processes, in particular the mechanisms of modern evolutionary theory (MET). Without this proof, your argument is susceptible to claims that it is circular. JJJayM_{January 31, 2009
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R0b:
I’m open to correction. What studies have been done that involve specified complexity? Specified complexity is purportedly a rigorous metric, so the claim that humans create it and law+chance doesn’t should be empirically testable. Where are those tests published?
jerry:
Apparently you need a basic biology course.
That's certainly true, but I'm still hoping for answers to my questions above, which would necessarily include some references. The point is this: If ID proponents want ID to be a part of mainstream science, with all of the benefits that entails, then they must start the discussion with assumptions that are already established. The assumptions that that human design activity does not reduce to law+chance, that specified complexity is a coherent concept, and that humans create it and nature does not are not established facts in science. It seems that establishing those facts, which would involve some empirical work, would be a good first step for ID proponents that want to base their arguments on them.R0b_{January 31, 2009
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Kirk: thank you for responding to my question, but the difficulty I was really having is that the calculation you perform for evolution (-log2[1/10^42]) didn't seem to make sense. With the information you've provided outside of the lecture I see now what the calculation means (a random walk in search space to find a 10^-42 sized island of it), but once more, this kind of random walk is a very unrealistic view of evolution. Natural selection does guide searches in spaces with smooth gradients, and nature does have such slopes. I really doubt the tornado-in-junkyard style is going to impress scientists.Venus Mousetrap_{January 31, 2009
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Typo problem: I notice that the symbol '?' appears in place of 'greater or equal to' and less than or equal to'. Hopefully, you can interpret the proper meaning give the context. In the preview, the proper symbol appeared, but when I posted it, the ? appeared instead.KD_{January 31, 2009
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I want to respond to a few of the comments made since my post. To help focus the discussion, I will break my response into sections a, b, c, … so that if someone has a concern about what I say below, he/she can refer to the appropriate section. a) Regarding function: Some have proposed an ad hoc function and then argued that functional information is ad hoc. It certainly will be if we just make up functions or let functionality be ad hoc. We can apply the equations for functional complexity and functional information to planetary orbits (as Mark Frank suggests) but before we do that, we must first decide what function must be satisfied and the function cannot be merely ad hoc or made up. For Mark Frank's example, no objective function was first proposed. Even if it turned out that planetary orbits in the same plane was necessary for life on earth, the probability of obtaining that, given the laws of physics and accretion disks around stars, would be very high with the result that little, if any functional information would be required to produce the effect. In other words, the functional state would deviate very little from the ground state provided by physics. Regarding Rob's worry about diamonds and functional carbon arrangements and crystal lattices, again function needs to be objective. Carbon has only two possible crystal lattice structures, graphite with sp^2 bonding and diamond with sp^3 bonding, so using Hazen's formula, N=2. Since there is only one option for diamonds (sp^3 bonding), M(ex) =1 in Hazen's formula and we see that diamonds require only 1 bit of functional information if we start with the null state. However, under certain boundary conditions, the sp^3 structure becomes the ground state and zero bits of functional information are required to form diamonds. If Rob wants to talk about carbon dust, then a very large number of configurations are possible (N=a large number), but almost any one of those piles of dust has the same function (the basic properties of piles of carbon dust), so M(Ex) = a large number and M(Ex) is approximately equal to N, with the result that the amount of functional information required is close to zero. When it comes to Venus Mousetrap's concern about defining biological function, we are in very good shape indeed. This has already been discussed in the literature and the bottom line is that the functions are any one of a host of biological processes. For a protein family, the sequences downloaded from Pfam represent a set of sequences that have actually been filtered for functionality by natural selection. When it comes to the minimal genome, the scientists involved in that research have a set of functional requirements that are a priori and objective. They then investigate different proteins and their functions to see what minimal set of proteins will meet the basic functionality defined by the objective requirements. b)Using the findings of Glass et al, the minimal genome will require at least 382 protein-coding genes. c) The average protein requires approximately 700 bits of functional information to encode (see my paper referenced in the previous post). Therefore, the minimal genome will require about 267,000 Fits of information (33 Kbytes). d) A distinguishing feature of intelligence is its ability to produce significant levels of functional information. Natural processes can produce very low levels of functional information within the 'noise' of random events. Intelligence, however, can produce effects that show up as extremely large anomalies within the background noise of natural processes. This artifact of intelligence can be used as an identifier for ID and the anomalies can be quantified using measures of functional complexity and/or functional information (the two are equivalent). e) Regarding Prof Olafson's latest post (126) where he states, "What we need is of course a specific ID hypothesis and one that does not relate to humans" and Mark Frank's request that "the ID hypothesis needs to be clarified." The ID hypothesis was presented earlier in the video, but not shown in the brief video clip posted above. In the full video it is included in slide number 6. I propose the 'Intelligence hypothesis' as follows: Intelligence hypothesis: An attribute that distinguishes intelligence from mindless natural processes is the ability of intelligence to produce effects requiring significant levels of functional information. Given the above hypothesis, we have a method to detect whether ID is likely to be required (slide 7 in the lecture). We need two things: First, we need a method to measure functional information and, second, a method to estimate what a 'significant' level of functional information is. The significant level will be contingent upon the power of the search engine that intelligence is competing with. f) Regarding Prof Olafson's concern about my statement " It was about 10^80000 times more probable that ID was required…” (to produce the minimal genome). I do not agree that the statement is inaccurately formulated. This is not a probability statement about ID; it is a probability statement about whether ID is likely to be required. Mark Frank makes the same oversight when he states, 'It does not follow that ID is a zillion times more probable than B.' It is not the probability of ID that I am dealing with, but the probability that ID is required. We already know with empirical certainty (ignoring philosophical skepticism) that ID exists (we have at least one example in humans, so the empirical probability of ID = 1) and we know that ID is capable of producing 33 Kbytes of functional information (again, we have more than one example) so we do not apply Bayes' theorem to figure out the empirical probability P(e|ID); the empirical probability P(e|ID)=1. I wonder if both Mark Frank and Prof Olafson are getting stuck on my using empirical observations of human intelligence as an indication of what we know ID can do. Consider the question, 'When we consider all the possible birds on all the possible planets in the universe, can some be black?' All I have to do is to find one example of a black bird (e.g., a Raven) and if we can agree, upon observing the bird, that the empirical probability that at least one bird is black is 1 (ignoring philosophical skepticism), then we have also proved with certainty the affirmative to the question of whether some birds can be black. In the same way, if we observe even one example of an intelligent agent producing an effect that requires 33 Kbytes of functional information, then even though we do not have a complete survey of all intelligent agents, we do know with certainty that some intelligent agents can produce 33 Kbytes of functional information, since it is an empirical fact in our case. In other words, when it comes to the questions of whether birds can be black, or whether ID can produce 33 Kbytes of functional information, black birds and intelligent agents producing 33 Kbytes of functional information are both empirical facts. If we can grant that the ability of ID to produce 33 Kbytes of functional information is an empirical fact, then the empirical probability P(33Kbytes|ID) = 1. What we do not know with certainty is whether ID will be required to form the minimal genome. We can only estimate how much more likely it is than natural processes. Natural processes can produce e?140 Fits, albeit with decreasing probability as e increases above 140 Fits. At or below 140 Fits, I've generously given that natural processes can produce e?140 bits with a probability of 1. Notice that there is no hard cut-off in my method to detect whether ID is required. Instead of an either/or result, the method merely estimates the likelihood that ID is required with the underlying assumption that once the probability that ID was required becomes high enough, a rational person will abandon natural processes and go with ID as the more probable explanation. So since ID can produce 33 Kbytes of functional information with demonstrable certainty (i.e., P(33 Kbytes|ID) =1) and if it is given that nature can produce 140 bits with certainty (B generously represents what nature is capable of doing with certainty in all searches), and can produce 33 Kbytes with a probability of 10^-80,000, then whenever we observe that 33 Kbytes of functional information occurs, how much more probable is it that ID was required than nature? The answer is P(33 Kbytes|ID)/P(33 Kbytes/B) = 10^80,000 In other words, ID is 10^80,000 more likely to be required to achieve 33 Kbytes of functional information than natural processes, given that natural processes can only reach 140 Fits with certainty and ID can reach 33 Kbytes with certainty. We are comparing an empirical probability of what ID can do with a Bayesian probability of what natural processes are likely to do, for any case where e?140 Fits. Important point to re-emphasize: I am not interested in any particular data set. Rather, I am interested in the measure of Fits required to produce any data set. Step one is to see if ID is likely to be required by looking at how many Fits are required for the data set and comparing the results with what nature can produce with certainty and with decreasing probability. Once that has been established, we can then proceed to the question of who did it. In SETI, archeology, and forensic science, step one is to see if ID was likely required and by what degree. If it is thought to be highly likely, then step two is to go with the ID option and learn more about who produced the signal/artifact/crime, how it was done and what can be learned from it.KD_{January 31, 2009
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DaveScot[119], I know this is a tangent to the Durstan discussion but as we're waiting to hear form him and you brought it up, I wonder about your statement
...the fine tuning of the universe, which if it was different by one part in 10^60 the universe would not be gravitationally stable (if the universe was heavier or lighter by as much one grain of sand it would not be stable), comes up with a positive result.
How do you get a positive result? In order to apply the filter you need to compute a probability. Of what are you computing a probability and what is it?Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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[131], Hey, Prof. Shouldn't that be "things" and "are"? Don't you have plural in Swedish???Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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jerry[129], Of course ID is a possible explanation. But, assuming a particular ID hypothesis, what is the probability that life would look the way it does? We can't say. We have no data, no information. And what is the a priori probability of ID? Again, we can't say. So all we are left with, and all that is hidden in Kirk's computations, is calculating the probability of chance occurrence of various features in nature. Probably that's all we can reasonable do, but then we need to be very careful with assumptions. As has been said many times on this blog, "chance" is not the same as "uniform distribution." As for logic, what do you think about Kirk's claims that "ID is 10^80000 times more probable?" Forget about probabilities, what is the logic here? I wouldn't call it "bogus" but I think it is obscure at best. And how do you relate this to Dembski's stance regarding elimination vs comparison? I've already said that I'm with Dr D on this one. Now for the real stuff:
the whole world was afraid of them in the 11th - 13th centuries.
Ahh, those were the days! The scariest thing we've come up with in modern times is IKEA furniture and Ace of Base...Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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Jerry[129], Yeah, I also hate those math-related domestic homicides.Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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Prof_P.Olofsson, Your statement should be "If I assume ID, life is possible; If I assume nature, life is extremely unlikely; hence life given ID is more than possible it is probable." If you read all my comment to Mark Frank you will know that all we ask for is that ID is possible as an explanation of life. If that is granted the real battle will be easier. Those who defend the extremely unlikelihood of naturalistic methods must by definition deny an intelligence prior to life or else their whole world view falls apart. I was very good at math at one time and enjoyed it very much and could get up to speed again on all the math necessary for these discussion in about 6 months if I went back to acting like a student. But I won't and my wife would kill me if I tried. So I'll stay out of the details of the math but the logic stays with me. And I can spot bogus logic a mile away. Jerry the Viking and also a Celtic so I probably have a lot of Scandinavian blood in me. I realize the Celts came originally from Switzerland via France but the Vikings paid a visit to Ireland starting in the 800's and so did the Normans later. The Vikings that went to France ended up being called the Normans and the whole world was afraid of them in the 11th - 13th centuries.jerry_{January 31, 2009
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Re #116 Me: In this case I think most readers will recognise that the intelligence explanation is “ad hoc” Bornagain77 Well I’m a reader and I don’t think it is ad hoc: I suspect you are not like most readers :-)Mark Frank_{January 31, 2009
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Jerry the ABBA-fan[125], Hehe, there is that Scandinavian modesty!Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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MarkFrank[114], You are absolutely correct. I was surprised by Kirk's explanation and I expected you to cook up something before the day dawned here in Texas! Very well said. As I said before, the only probability he can even attempt to compute is the one that is now labeled P(e|B) and that is precisely what he does. In his video he makes a statement about the probability of ID so I expected him to back it up with the relevant Bayesian inference. Now, there is no Bayesian inference, only a comparison of likelihoods, one of which is based on the assumptions that P(ID)=1 and P(e|ID)=1 where "ID" apparently means the event that any kind of intelligent design exists so of course it has probability 1. What we need is of course a specific ID hypothesis and one that does not relate to humans. His calculation of P(e|ID) rests upon a uniformity assumption that I have not looked closer into. At this stage, I think he needs to come up with a much better explanation for his claims before I do so. Those of you who discuss the "explanatory filter," keep in mind that the filter is strictly eliminatory, whereas Kirk's analysis is based on comparison. It feels good to be on Dembski's blog and also on Dembski's side on this issue! :) Jerry the Viking[117], one thing that Mark is explaining here is that there is a no logical foundation of conclusions like "If I assume ID, life is very probable; hence ID is very probable." As this post was initiated by a video with lots of math in it, this discussion must be about math, probability, and logic. Mark understands all of these very well.Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 31, 2009
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tribune7, Thank you but I bet some others here could say it better.jerry_{January 31, 2009
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DaveScot @ 121 (assuming this comment makes it): are you saying that functional complexity measurements require both Shannon-style uncertainty (for the improbability calculation) and Kolmorogov-style complexity (for eliminating natural law?). I never got that impression from what I've heard about ID, but it'd go a little way toward furthering understanding of it. If that is true, does the law of conservation of information act on one or both of these kinds of information (which, if I understand, are not equivalent)?Venus Mousetrap_{January 31, 2009
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Jerry, another great post. You have been on a roll.tribune7_{January 31, 2009
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Mark --because it can be used to make a case for design for any very unlikely outcome. You can say the same thing about chance. This debate basically concerns the point at which design becomes a more reasonable explanation than chance. but what does it add to the science to hypothesise intelligence? The presumption of design in no science stopper. All the great scientists presumed design, even Einstein. Meth nat has its place but the problem is that for many it has become the arbiter of all truth. Meth nat is very good for the mundane such as building a bridge but it cannot even come close to answering the big questions. The big problem in the West is that is is used to attempt to answer the big "why are we here" questions. Just look at bioethics and evolutionary psychology. What ID does is get science out of the business of setting morals, which would be of great service to science.tribune7_{January 31, 2009
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Seversky: Put very simply, the Explanatory Filter seems to proceed by a process of elimination. For any highly-improbable event, if you can rule out both law and chance as sufficient causes then what remains must be design.
In order to reach a design inference TWO criteria must be met- the elimination of bt cahnce and regularity PLUS a specification must be met. If those TWO are not met then we say "WE don't know (but design remains a p[ossibility)"Joseph_{January 31, 2009
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Rob @94 A diamond does not rise to the level of specified complexity. While one might make a case that it has specification, as an abrasive for instance, it is not complex as the atoms are in a simple repetitive arrangement i.e. law and chance is a perfectly valid explanation for the structure of a diamond.DaveScot_{January 31, 2009
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For those who missed it, gpuccio made a similar argument to Kirk's in a recent thread. Although very long I'd suggest reading through the entire discussion since it largely encompasses the ID debate as it stands.Patrick_{January 31, 2009
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Seversky @90 You ask how can we use the explanatory filter to distinguish design from non-design if the entire universe and everything in it is designed. A tenet of the explanatory filter is that it may produce false negatives i.e. a designer can make something appear to be the result of law and chance. The bar for a positive result is ostensibly set high enough so that false positives are not produced. Thus the result of a coin flip, even though it may be designed, comes up negative and the fine tuning of the universe, which if it was different by one part in 10^60 the universe would not be gravitationally stable (if the universe was heavier or lighter by as much one grain of sand it would not be stable), comes up with a positive result.DaveScot_{January 31, 2009
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Professor O -- and here I thought I stumped you :-) ToE invokes randomness (as in undirected mutations) as integral hence probability calculations are necessary in determining its reasonableness. So the factors its seems are something with a function and the number of opportunities, which are obviously bounded by physical limitations, for this function to come about by chance. Obviously laws can decrease chance dramatically but the only law invoked by ToE is natural selection. Few, if any, of us here deny that RM+NS is a real influence on life. What is strongly doubted is the claim that it can explain all biodiversity (or life itself). What is interesting is the search for the edge of RM+NS (which, or course, requires the recognition that it has an edge) And yes there is a positive aspect to ID too (design has inherent characteristics and DNA, proteins etc. match show positive for them).tribune7_{January 31, 2009
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Mark Frank, You do not seem to understand what this debate is all about. No where does ID deny that there may be naturalistic processes that could explain the origin of new functional proteins or the even more arduous task for nature that these proteins then are able to act in concert to produce amazing results. What ID says is that the odds, probability, likelihood etc. is so small that it reasonably didn't happen that way. There is no evidence of some unknown law that would accomplish this as Schroedinger thought in "What is Life?" Chance cannot generate the functionality on its own. Intelligence then falls out as a then likely explanation. All of ID is really a logical exercise while its opposition clings to irrational arguments that appeal to some unknown process that has only happened in the distant past. But the real crux of the problem is not scientific but ideology. Currently the conventional wisdom is that the process proceeded naturally and any attempt to say otherwise is squelched and squelched harshly. So the student taking a biology course is given an explanation that has no scientific basis and told the that those who have alternative hypotheses spout gibberish and are religious fundamentalists. ID is rarely portrayed correctly by scientists or the popular press. As one recent episode will show clearly, read Behe's book, "The Edge of Evolution" and then go to amazon.com and his blog and read the reviews of the book by the best and brightest of the evolutionary biologist in the world and see the substance of their claims. Biology textbooks have false claims about evolution portrayed as facts proven by science when no such proof exists and there is good scientific reasoning to show that they may be false. At the same time you have people openly admitting that these false claims have led them to a life change in terms of their beliefs about the world and now they openly proselytize their world view to all who are led to believe that their claims are based on settled science. So here we have people like yourself desperately trying to sure up these bogus claims anyway they can. When presented with the arguments of ID, all people do is wishfully hope that the conclusions they so desperately want will somehow be supported or that the people who deny the claims are first some misguided rubes who do not know what they are talking about. When that fails they hope desperately that the ID claims are off by some undetermined number of zeros in their probability estimates and that they didn't dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's" so that they can arbitrarily be dismissed. This is not a discussion of learning but desperately trying to find one last gotcha or small flaw so one can go away comfortably and say that the ID people really do not have anything that holds up under scrutiny. Then the new headline will be that ID latest nonsense is shown just that, as nonsense, and all you people who were considering it as an explanation, pay attention to calmer wiser minds who know the real truth on this. It is a game and right now the deck is stacked against any ID argument but the game will continue to play out mainly via the internet till the actual truth is realized. And what is that truth. It is not that ID is absolutely proven fact but that the alternative is highly suspect and that current evidence lines up more behind ID than behind a naturalistic explanation. If you deny the last sentence then I suggest you put up or remember the famous religious statement "Forever hold your peace."jerry_{January 31, 2009
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Mark Frank states: "Therefore intelligence is several million more times likely to be the cause of the alignment of the planets than chance. In this case I think most readers will recognise that the intelligence explanation is “ad hoc” and the rational things to do is to ignore and continue to look for other explanations – even if we don’t know what they are at the moment." Well I'm a reader and I don't think it is ad hoc: Yet In Newton’s Principia, Newton concluded that humans know God only by examining the evidences of His creations: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfection; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion; for we adore him as his servants. Maybe this ad hoc assumption is yours alone?bornagain77_{January 31, 2009
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Here is second, more off the wall, thought for Kirk. Assuming your biochemistry is correct, you have posed a problem for evolutionary biology, but what does it add to the science to hypothesise intelligence? I assume that you accept that life started as a relatively limited set of proteins and that all new proteins are created from existing DNA through replication, mutation, combination etc. There must be something about this process that makes it plausible to get from one island of folding protein to another in the time available (you have posed intelligent intervention as the mechanism). There is no question that life does succeed in bridging the gap between islands of useful proteins. We are also getting better and better at observing the replication process. So we will have increasing opportunity to observe successful bridging taking place. What will we see, what can we possibly see? Unless we get an explicit statement from the designer, we will either observe some mechanism for biasing the replication towards a useful protein or we will simply see that for some unexplained reason DNA leaps to new useful places. In the first case scientists will have found what they consider to be a natural explanation, in the second case they will still have an unresolved problem and will continue to work on it. But in the absence of a signed affidavit from the designer they will continue to seek a natural solution (maybe without ever succeeding) because there is no way to pursue the teleological solution. Newton assumed the laws of motion and gravity were God’s will – but an atheist can work just as well with his laws. It makes little difference to the scientist whether intelligence is involved or not.Mark Frank_{January 31, 2009
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Kirk Thanks for your clear and interesting comment. I am not qualified to comment on the biochemistry but I would like to comment on the logic of your reasoning. I have already said all of this in various comments above and elsewhere – I have just brought them together and perhaps expressed them a bit more clearly. First, as PO has pointed out your comment says something different from your presentation. In the comment you have estimated the relative likelihood of e given B compared to e given ID and estimated it to be a zillion times greater for ID than B. It does not follow that that ID is a zillion times more probable than B – (which is what you said and put on your slides, but hopefully not in your paper). This may seem like pedantry to some readers – but it is not. You can tell there is something odd about this argument (the one you used in your presentation) because it can be used to make a case for design for any very unlikely outcome. For example, on first sight it seems extremely odd that the orbits of all the planets are aligned in much the same plane. Assuming random inclinations of planets the probability of such an alignment happening by chance is one in several million (depending how you calculate it). This is nothing compared to the zillions you are working with, but quite big enough to make the point. Now we know that humans are capable of aligning the orbits of large numbers of spheres using intelligence. So, using your argument, the probability of such an alignment given intelligence is 1. Therefore intelligence is several million more times likely to be the cause of the alignment of the planets than chance. In this case I think most readers will recognise that the intelligence explanation is “ad hoc” and the rational things to do is to ignore and continue to look for other explanations – even if we don’t know what they are at the moment. (I know that other explanations spring to mind rather easily in the case of planets) I tried to turn your argument into Bayesian logic – but it just disappears into a mire of unknowns and metaphysical speculation: First, the ID hypothesis needs to be clarified. We know that a human is capable of creating RecA. We also know that a human did not create the RecA that is found in living things. So the “ID” hypothesis is actually: “something other than a human had the intelligence, powers and motivation to create proteins with the fits of RecA in living things”. Having clarified what ID is you then attempt to estimate P(e|ID). It isn’t 1. There is no reason to suppose that this thing was bound to succeed. It all depends how it is hypothesised to have worked. Did it directly intervene and line up the DNA? Or did it just create a fitness function which somewhat biased the odds? Or did it perhaps generate 10^250 trials somewhere else and insert the ones that matched via a virus? So P(e|ID) is only 1 if you assume the designer was competent enough to create RecA for certain. It is actually a complete unknown. To complete the Bayesian logic you then have to estimate the prior probability of such a thing existing. As the thing is defined as “that intelligence which is capable of producing the result” and in no other terms – this is not so much low as meaningless.Mark Frank_{January 31, 2009
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tyharris[111,112], Thanks! Those are very nice words to hear in a debate that often gets heated and reduces to personal attacks and insults (I mean the general debate, the exchanges I've been involved in have been mostly civil). I've gotten to know some decent and respectful people in the ID camp and I have no problems with disagreeing on issues. I also thank Kirk and wish him the best of luck with his graduate studies and his research. I have problems with the types of probability claims he makes but, as I said before, I do not dismiss his actual research based on those claims. There are certainly mathematicians on "our side" who work on applying math to evolutionary biology (such as Rick Durrett at Cornell) but I agree that much more can be done.Prof_P.Olofsson_{January 30, 2009
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Also thanks to Mr. Dunston for contributing to a very relevant field of study- ie. the application of math to specifying and quantifying biological information. I dont claim to come close to understanding you OR dembski comlpetely as regards your calculations, but I do think that even a layman can see that the more we learn about how ridiculously, unbelievably complex life is, the lower the probability becomes that it all came about independent of design. At any rate, attempting to quantify both the complexity of biological information, and taking a stab at the probability of it all just writing itself is important work and I commend you and all who undertake it. Better you than me. Personally, I would rather take a bullet than go through high-school trigonometry again- that's how I feel about math.tyharris_{January 30, 2009
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