The Cost of Mistakes
| January 8, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
In the comments of Gil’s article about why a greater percentage of engineers vs. scientists are open to the idea of life being a result of intelligent design I remarked that medical doctors are another occupational outlier in there being a larger than expected percentage open to ID. I asked the MDs here if they could comment on that because while I can understand the POV of engineers and mathematicians I couldn’t figure out why MDs would also be an exception.
After thinking about it a while it occurred to me that medical doctors, like engineers, understand the cost of mistakes in complex systems better than academic scientists. Orthodox evolution theory is based on the notion that sometimes a mistake in a complex system will result in better fitness for purpose. Doctors and engineers however know that mistakes in complex systems seldom if ever result in improved fitness but rather more often result in loss of fitness (often catastrophic loss of fitness resulting in death).
When a doctor or an engineer makes a mistake it can cost lives. When an evolutionary biologist makes a mistake like saying whales are more closely related to horses than hippos there are no lives lost because of it. The consequences of their mistakes are entirely academic. So they have a whole different mindset about the cost of mistakes than do medical doctors and engineers.
38 Responses to The Cost of Mistakes
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DaveScot wrote
I think if you ask any actual designer of spacecraft he’ll slap you for asking such a stupid question because if you start randomly modifying flight systems on the space shuttle you’ll quickly end up with smoldering pieces of space shuttles and no whole space shuttles at all.
I disagree with your assessment that “you’ll quickly end up with smoldering pieces of space shuttles”
In the scenario above, shuttles which posess harmful modifications will fail to leave any offspring. Therefore additional harmful modifications cannot occur to this particular design. In addition to this duplication errors do not always occur. These non-modified shuttles will have offspring, given selection criteria have not changed. So at the very least, you will have a population of unmodified shuttles, or shuttles with neutral modifications.
I believe the selection process will prevent harmful modifications from accumulating in the manor you propose.
5b01zerobone,
Serious about Behe’s book. It was the first book on questioning evolution that I could really relate to. It supported doubts that I had but at the time did not have the knowledge to support. I tried to discuss it with some of my professors but they offered only the standard answers used to shut down discussion such as attacking his credentials (as they also did with Dembski- he’s just a theologist). My bio instructor addresses the mousetrap analogy by asking students to think of ways you could catch mice (although less efficiently) with only one or some of the parts such as smashing a mouse with the wood block. No one in class seemed to question the fact you are not just using the wood block but a very sofisticated system to spot, track, and manipulate the wood block that you just added all at once.
In my circle of friends the engineers require the most data to support claims before they will be convinced.
Not quite. That’s why scientists need to be engineers and not Darwinists.
Tom said: “Anyone with the least experience in real world engineering knows in their bones that mistakes are the crucial opportunities that enable us to advance. Trial and error are the names of the game and any product, hardware or software, goes through numerous revisions as part of the development process.”
Yep, you got it finally right! Brava, Tom! You named “revisions” & “development process”…
I must tell you something: when you first try to solve a problem, the first thing you usually do is – you think! You think and try to find a solution to the problem. Then, you act. You apply your solution and see (observe) if your solution worked. If your solution solved the problem, you usually stop. If the problem is not solved, you THINK AGAIN… And try to find another solution…
If you are a trained engineer you will think twice: first, to find a solution, and second, to PREDICT if the solution will work. You may have some (intelligently designed) tools for that: computer simulations or DFSS stuff… And then you can act and apply the solution…
So, as you can see, YOU HAVE TO THINK A LOT to find the best solution to your problem… Aka – USE YOUR INTELLIGENCE…
You know, first of all, the Nature cannot “think”. That means:
- cannot be aware a problem has arose;
- cannot seek for a solution…
Second, it cannot “observe”. That means cannot choose between a good and a bad solution.
Third, the Nature cannot “think” (again). That means it cannot IMPROVE a solution…
Question: what do you do at NASA ?…
correction: previous post should read ‘theologian- creationist’ not theologist.
What? How did you get that from what I said? Again: the penalties for being wrong in basic research are far slimmer than the penalties for being wrong when building a bridge. Because of this, engineers need a different set of skills than scientists have. It is good, for instance, for engineers to be extremely conservative about novelty and risk. On the other hand, researchers are wrong all the time (not every hypothesis comes out true), and that’s part of the process. Scientists shouldn’t be engineers, for good reason.
And since when are “engineer” and “Darwinist” mutually exclusive categories?
grendelkhan,
Apparently you don’t wish to exercise a sense of humor.
Well, well, well, I seem to recall a certain National Academy of Sciences president lobbying for biologists to be trained in engineering.
grendelkhan,
You also might consider the emerging field of Systems Biology cannot accomplish its research without understanding engineering principles. Your pronouncements, though possibly defensible 4 decades ago, is now obsolete. Modern science is becoming better and better understood from a systems and communication theory perspective, exactly the domain of engineering. That make sense if the universe and life are designed…