“Specified Complexity” and the second law
| April 2, 2007 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
A mathematics graduate student in Colombia has noticed the similarity between my second law arguments (“the underlying principle behind the second law is that natural forces do not do macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view”), and Bill Dembski’s argument (in his classic work “The Design Inference”) that only intelligence can account for things that are “specified” (=macroscopically describable) and “complex” (=extremely improbable). Daniel Andres’ article can be found (in Spanish) here . If you read the footnote in my article A Second Look at the Second Law you will notice that some of the counter-arguments addressed are very similar to those used against Dembski’s “specified complexity.”
Every time I write on the topic of the second law of thermodynamics, the comments I see are so discouraging that I fully understand Phil Johnson’s frustration, when he wrote me “I long ago gave up the hope of ever getting scientists to talk rationally about the 2nd law instead of their giving the cliched emotional and knee-jerk responses. I skip the words ’2nd law’ and go straight to ‘information’”. People have found so many ways to corrupt the meaning of this law, to divert attention from the fundamental question of probability–primarily through the arguments that “anything can happen in an open system” (easily demolished, in my article) and “the second law only applies to energy” (though it is applied much more generally in most physics textbooks). But the fact is, the rearrangement of atoms into human brains and computers and the Internet does not violate any recognized law of science except the second law, so how can we discuss evolution without mentioning the one scientific law that applies?
71 Responses to “Specified Complexity” and the second law
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Evolution can be considered a targeted search; the target being a species that flourishes in the given environment. Closeness to that target is rewarded by survival (that may be tautological, but that does not make it wrong). Yes, genetic algorithms are designed. That does not by itself imply that analogous processes must also be designed.
kairosfocus
Having big problems getting the next bit though, so I apologise for breaking it up so.
… continues
So follow it through. S(config) for DNA at 0 K is zero. The same for a random sequence, a simple repeating sequence and human DNA.
… continues
Consider this thought experiment:
Right, I give up. It is stupid when I have to submit an argument one sentence at a time to sneak it past the spam filter. My last seven word sentence was rejected, with nothing in any way offensive in it. Kairosfocus, can I suggest you start a thread at your blog on this, and we move over there.
Hi Pixie:
I sympathise on the comment filtering issue — having had some mysterious swallowings myself. On the other hand, in another thread this AM Dave Scott informed me they have had something like 90,000 spam messages in recent months, and very few of these have been filtered off improperly. [I think there is a two stage filter or something . . .]
I have posted a thread for onward comments.
Pausing [get the link out of the way first] . . .
Continuing . ..
Got through! Now on points:
1] 0 K:
You can’t get there – and that’s important. [And at any accessible temp, Sconfig is a function of the number of states that pass the functional/macroscopic state test, random states in effect having a no-test test. For a unique code, once it is specified, its Sconfig is already zero. But of course it has thermal entropy etc. Recall for a system that can be so comparmentalised, Wsys = W1.W2. [This now standard trick, I believe, was originally used by Boltzmann to derive s = k ln w itself, using a hypothetical physical partitioning of the system. That is comparmentalisation of statistical weights based on physical processes is an underlying assumption of the whole process. Thence my vats and nanobots again.]
2] Modes and degrees of freedom
Of course,we have freezing out effects that on a quantum basis do separate modes “naturally.” In TBO’s case and my Vat exercise, once we see that the energy of bonds is more or less the same for any configuration, and there is no effective pressure-volume work being done, the enthalpy term is quasi-neutral across configurations. But, when not just any random or near random config will do [TBO discuss this on proteins in Chs 8 and 9], programmed work is normally indicated to get to the specified one. Prebiotic soup exercises end up requiring more probabilistic resources than are available in the credible gamut of the observed cosmos.
BTW, from the discussion and refs made in TMLO, the usage of configurational work and entropy they make is in the OOL lit from that time, i.e. this is again not a design thought innovation as such.
3] Wiki note:
TBO’s usage is of course in this spirit, bearing in mind that the molecules in view are endothermically formed so the work of clumping and that of configuring can reasonably be separated as mere clumping is vastly unlikely to get to the macroscopically recognisable functional state. Thus too, my vats example.
Pausing 2 . . .
Continuing . . .
4] Evolution can be considered a targeted search; the target being a species that flourishes in the given environment. Closeness to that target is rewarded by survival (that may be tautological, but that does not make it wrong)
Several notes:
a] First, an equivocation. “Targetted†in GAs is intelligent, not blind. (E.g. Set up antenna performance specs and randomise parameters to get the heuristically “best†outcome etc. Do a Monte Carlo pattern of runs on a model, etc. Trial and error by PC . . . ) By definition, NDT style evolution is precisely not based on a targetted, configurationally constrained search that rewards closeness to the identified target.
b] Second, “natural selection†is a term not a creative force of reality. In the real world, what happens is that relatively well adapted individuals are more likely to thrive and reproduce, so their descendants dominate the population. There is no necessary tendency to drift. [Cf the discussion under the Blythian thread to see this.] NS is consistent with minor changes as observed [often oscillating, like Galapagos Finch beaks], it is consistent with stasis, and with loss of genetic information – how the founder principle often leads to new varieties and even “species.†[NB how some of the Galapagos Finch species are interbreeding successfully now . . .]
c] The tautology issue comes up when the above is confused with a creative force. That the least unfit or better fitted survive and reproduce does not mean that they are innovative, adaptable to future unforeseen environmental shits, etc. Frontloading is intelligently targetted by contrast, with local adaptability across multiple environments a major objective of the optimisation. (I am not advocating this, just noting.)
d] The biggie issue is information generation beyond the Dembski-type bound by in effect random processes, say 500 – 1000 bits, or about 250 – 500 monomers. Body plan level innovations to account for the Cambrian revolution on require three or five or more orders of magnitude more than that. The whole gamut of the observed cosmos, 13.7 BY and 10^80 or so atoms [on a generous estimate!] are insufficient to credibly cross that threshold once much less dozens or more times.
e] The issue comes back to the point in my jet in a vat, or TBO’s protein in a prebiotic soup. The bridge to cross is the gap from scattered components to complex integrated functional whole where a high threshold of functionality is required for minimal function to occur. Intelligent agents do this routinely. Random forces for excellent reasons linked tot he underlying analysis of stat thermodynamics, do not do so credibly within the gamut of the observed cosmos. So, absent a back way up Mt Improbable there is an unanswered problem. And, as Ch 9 in TBO points out, it’s slim pickens on back paths up Mt Improbable.[Shapiro's recent Sci Am piece just underscores the point . . .]
5] It seems your original post was approved and has already gone through . . .
GEM of TKI
OOPS! Shifts. [And Open Office AND Firefox did not spot the typo -- what does that tell us . . .]
I have given up on this thread, and am continuing the discussion at the thread kairosfocus kindly started on his own blog here.
Pixie
I have responded at the blog.
Onlookers are invited to go take a look.
GEM of TKI
PS: It is probably worth excerpting here as a closeoff at UD, an excerpt I used from Sewell’s main presentation of his case as he cites above:
Go to the link to follow up on the significance of that and how it develops.
All the best.