The ID Hypothesis

_{Barry Arrington

August 4, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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A friend writes and asks how ID comports with the “scientific method.” I respond:

As for the scientific method, I am all for it:

Question to be Investigated: What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?

Hypothesis: CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents. Moreover, intelligent agents leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned. Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of intelligent agent.”

The intelligent design project is, essentially, the scientific investigation of this hypothesis.

Interestingly, Darwinists make mutually exclusive attacks on the hypothesis. Some claim the hypothesis is not scientific because it cannot be, even in principle, falsified. Others claim the hypothesis fails because it has been falsified. Surely you will agree that it cannot be both.

The answer is that the hypothesis is, in principle, falsifiable.

All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.

I have to add that typical Darwinist circular reasoning and “just so stories” will not do the trick. That is to say, reasoning of the following sort fails to impress: CSI arose though the combination of chance and mechanical necessity. How do you know this? Well, we inferred it from the data. And on what was your inference based? It was based on our a priori commitment to explanations based solely on chance and mechanical necessity through which all interpretations of the data must be filtered.

Comments

Not in the same sense as in a non-cloning population. For a mutation to "fix" in a cloning population it would mean that the lineage with the mutation, together with any other mutations in that lineage is the only lineage remaining. This is not the case in a sexually reproducing population and that makes a difference to interpretation.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Liz:"Mutations don’t “fix” in a bacterial population," "Lenski has estimated that only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with less than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population"junkdnaforlife_{August 8, 2011
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such a neat arrangement comes about by design, real butterfingers this morningkairosfocus_{August 8, 2011
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Dr Liddle: Sorry, you have proposed precisely what is not available, a handy ladder to whatever configs can work, and stepping-stones from one island of function to the next. Such a near arranement coems about by design. In the case we do have to deal with, deeply isolated needles, even if present in great number, as long as tghey do not dominate the 1 light monthsh onthe side haystack, are overwhelmingly not going to come up if you do the equivalent of pulling just one straw [or if you are lucky, needle] by chance. the overwhelming pattern is gibberish or non functional configs. You have to get to the shores of an island of function first -- a function that is highly complex and specific -- the challenge in hand -- before the hill climbing on differential function can happen. That is why GAs and the like all fail to be material, they start within islands of function and follow gradients on defined fitness functions that are not dominated by non-function. Begging he question consistently can blind you to what would otherwise be obvious. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 8, 2011
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There are indeed some walls in bacterial evolution (breached by HGT however). These walls are not present in sexually reproducing populations, in which mutations can propagate independently of the rest of the genotype. So Darwinism is in no danger from Lenski, even if your interpretation were correct. But you are not correct, because you are equivocating with concepts developed for sexually-reproducing species applied to cloning populations. Mutations don't "fix" in a bacterial population, because they don't jump lineages. What you get is competition between one lineage bearing a mutation and another that doesn't, and that competition occurs within a specific environment in which "beneficial" is defined only within that environment. What Lenski has shown is a "law of diminishing returns" when bacteria adapt to a new environment. But even that is not a universal law - in one of his examples, a mutation only became beneficial when combined with another - law of increasing returns. But it is true that adaptation tends to be asymptotic along any one dimension. Fortunately there are usually lots.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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The lenski studies + mathematics will eventually erode Darwinism. 10-20 beneficial mutations over 50,000+ generations. 12 independent populations, after millions of mutations (lenski claims every single point mutation has mutated), and we end up with is the same distribution of 10-20 beneficial mutations in each of the 12 independent populations after 50000+ generations. It looks like a wall. If say, one population had fixed 200 beneficial mutations, and another only 5, then there is more wiggle room for hand waving. Instead it appears a very evenly distributed mut+sel rate for beneficial mutations to fix in a population. No Darwinian magic. Mut+sel appears to be a slow and predictable engine, not the robust creative force that can power a possible 50,000 modifications (Berlinski's guess) to evolve a cow into a whale. Something is missing. The watch guy's model looks more analogous to Yorkshire terrier breeding.junkdnaforlife_{August 8, 2011
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kf
The reason why CSI would be vanishingly unlikely to emerge by forces and processes of blind chance and mechanical necessity have been explained to you repeatedly.
And I have tried, repeatedly, to explain why the argument does not work :) Communication is tough, eh :)
If you take the equivalent of a one-straw sample from a cubical hay bale a light month across, at random or by a combination of random walk and trial and error success leading to improved solutions once a first success has been found, the problem is that you are not credibly going to get to needle instead of hay in the stack.
Well, I disagree. Obviously you won't get there by choosing straws at random. By definition, in fact - if something has CSI it can't be reached in the time and space of the universe by choosing straws at random. The same is not true of other non-design search strategies. Let's take a toy model - the clock evolution model I linked to in another thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0 Here, the search space is finite and large (every possible genome) and the solution space also large, but much smaller magnitude smaller than the search space (the author says that a random sampling of the search space generates 2% hits in solution space). Yet the algorithm finds a member of the solution space reliably every time, and does not waste probabilistic resources (in this case, iterations) randomly sampling the entire space. If it did, it would probably still be running. And the reason it can do so is not simply that Darwinian algorithms work (they do) but that the reason they work is that the search space itself is structured. By that, I mean that the tiny subset of the search space that comprises solutions are adjacent to each other, and the crudest solutions are nearest the edge. So you just need to find one edge of the solution space by random search, and you are aboard. Clearly living things occupy a much larger search space. But, equally the solution space is also much larger, and similarly structured. In fact, much more highly structured because it is a high-dimensioned space. Now, while I accept that you do not think the above is plausible (that "if you think mere objection or imagination of a wonderful path to complexity that starts from just about anywhere and proceeds by nice easy steps up Mt Improbable, suffices to overwhelm a search challenge like this, we are entitled to draw our own conclusions") the objections I am hearing to my position are all based on the assumption that evolution is a random search of unstructured search space, not a Darwinian search of highly structured search space. Given a highly structured search space, I submit that Darwinian search works extremely well, which is why clocks reliable evolve in that toy model. So the question, I suggest, that ID proponents need to address is: is the search space explored by evolutionary processes in the living world highly structured or not? If not, sure, Darwinian mechanisms won't work. If it is, then it will. And I submit that it is.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Re DM: If it were empirically shown that CSI is not a reliable sign that points to design as more or less direct causal factor, then the design theory project would collapse. And, theistic evolutionists, at least many prominent and vociferous ones, are NOT supporters of the design inference on CSI etc as reliable sign. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 8, 2011
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Dr Liddle: The reason why CSI would be vanishingly unlikely to emerge by forces and processes of blind chance and mechanical necessity have been explained to you repeatedly. If you take the equivalent of a one-straw sample from a cubical hay bale a light month across, at random or by a combination of random walk and trial and error success leading to improved solutions once a first success has been found, the problem is that you are not credibly going to get to needle instead of hay in the stack. And that is the ratio of the ptqs resources of our solar system tot he space of configs of just 500 bits or 72 ASCII characters. so, if I see 73 or more characters worth of functionally specific info UNrepresentative of the set of all possibilities -- mostly gibberish -- i have excellent reason to infer design on seeing this sign. For more detail cf here. You are free to hold your own views, but if you think mere objection or imagination of a wonderful path to complexity that starts from just about anywhere and proceeds by nice easy steps up Mt Improbable, suffices to overwhelm a search challenge like this, we are entitled to draw our own conclusions. One of these is that a one straw size sample from a one light month size haystack, is not going to be at all likely to pick up anything but hay. And that sample is the whole solar system racing away at a state per Planck time for 5 - 20 BY. For just 500 bits, the evidence on life forms is that 100,000 bits is more like the threshold for a living cell. The evidence for design as key causal process for life forms, from the first body plan to our own, is overwhelming. Save, if one has swallowed materialistic a priorism as a censoring constraint; often under the disguise that science may only infer to "natural causes" where the contrast made is to the despised "supernatural" -- but where the real issue [since PLATO] is nature vs art on empirically tested reliable signs. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 8, 2011
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Barry writes:
A friend writes and asks how ID comports with the “scientific method.” I respond: As for the scientific method, I am all for it:
But what follows is not an example of the scientific method!
Question to be Investigated: What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?
Problem starts here: CSI, by Dembski's definition, is a pattern is vanishingly unlikely to have arisen through chance and necessity, and given that the only other inference allowable is design, then it assumes its conclusion. So to procede you need a better definition of CSI.
Hypothesis: CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two.
That is not a hypothesis. It is a premise. Not only that, it is a circular premise, because if CSI is observed in living things, then you can equally well note that it has frequently been observed to arise without the aid of any observable designer.
Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents.
Again, a premise, not a hypothesis. This one happens to be true.
Moreover, intelligent agents leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned.
Again, not a hypothesis, and not even clear as a statement - what "indicia"?
Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of intelligent agent.”
Again, not a hypothesis. It seems you are attempting a syllogism not a hypothesis.
The intelligent design project is, essentially, the scientific investigation of this hypothesis.
And it is because it is not a hypothesis that it is not a scientific investigation. It may be a philosophical investigation, in which case the first state will be to verify your premises. The don't look very good to me :)
Interestingly, Darwinists make mutually exclusive attacks on the hypothesis. Some claim the hypothesis is not scientific because it cannot be, even in principle, falsified. Others claim the hypothesis fails because it has been falsified. Surely you will agree that it cannot be both.
My view is that as you have stated it, it isn't even a hypothesis. The criticism launched at ID hypotheses tend to depend on how they are stated. Some have been falsified. Others cannot be. A few can be falsified and haven't been. I'd like to see more of those :)
The answer is that the hypothesis is, in principle, falsifiable.
Not this one because it isn't a hypothesis!
All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.
So let me help: Hypothesis: That a certain class of pattern, exhibiting both complexity (large number of bits required to notate) and specification (one of a small subset of the possible number of comparable sequences that are fairly compressible/specify some function) are extremely unlikely to arise through from regular physical-chemical processes combined with stochastic events. That's falsifiable. I'd argue it has been falsified.
I have to add that typical Darwinist circular reasoning and “just so stories” will not do the trick. That is to say, reasoning of the following sort fails to impress: CSI arose though the combination of chance and mechanical necessity.
Well,that wouldn't be an argument. It would just be a counter-assertion.
How do you know this? Well, we inferred it from the data. And on what was your inference based? It was based on our a priori commitment to explanations based solely on chance and mechanical necessity through which all interpretations of the data must be filtered.
No, the falsifier is the demonstration that given a minimal self-replicator that replicates with variance in the ability to replicate in a given environment, highly complex and specified sequences can emerge. Which is why GAs are used to design things. The counter-rebuttal to this has to take the form of demonstrating that GAs don't produce CSI (by a non-circular definition) or, that only do so by virtue of being Designed. Simply pointing out that the fitness function is designed doesn't work, because the fitness function is simply a simulation of a natural environment. Pointing out that the initial population of self-replicators are designed doesn't work because nobody is claiming that Darwinian mechanisms account for the origins of Darwinian-capable organisms. This means that the remaining valid argument (on your side) is that the minimum Darwinian-capable entity has too much CSI to have arisen by chance. Which is a different question. and an interesting one :) If you want to do science, that's the one I'd tackle, if I were you. Kf is on it. I think he's wrong, but he's on it, at least :)Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Barry Arrington: You said in the OP, “All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.” I said in 45: “No it wouldn’t. ID could still be in operation in addition to evolution. That’s basic theistic evolution: God set up the world to generate species mostly through evolution, but He adds a little design when it suites His purposes.” Do you agree with me that finding that CSI arises from mutation and natural selection would not blow ID out of the water because if Theistic Evolution is true then this is exactly what we would expect and TE incorporates a Designer.dmullenix_{August 8, 2011
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Mung at 72: “non-workable” information in this case would be “bad” mutations – mutations that stop the DNA from doing what it used to do. Yes, information can be meaningless. Random noise is information, it’s just not information that means anything. You could assign a meaning to a chunk of random noise, however. For instance, you could easily set up an electronic circuit to make this sequence “0110100101” turn on a light or even trigger a bomb. “Give us just one standard according to which this is a gain in information.” The standard Dr. Dembski sets out at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm Scan down to the paragraph that contains “But consider now a different example”. Bob and Alice flip a coin 5 times. That’s a pure random number. No meaning is ever assigned to it. Bob misses the first toss, Alice doesn’t see the fifth toss. But they combine their observations to obtain all 5 bits of information. Dembski never assigns a meaning to the five bits, but he spends several paragraphs and some math showing how to combine the information in the two observations to recover all five of the original bits. I’d hate to think you’re one of those Dembski Deniers who think information has to have a meaning assigned to it to be information. Message B in my example is message A with the last character mutated. We know that Apo-AI is the original protein because everybody in the world has it except for members of one family in Milan who never get heart attacks or strokes. Upright BiPed at 73 I’m not sure what you mean. Could you explain a little more clearly?dmullenix_{August 8, 2011
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DM You simply assume the representations that make the entire system possible. It's good that you can speak with such certainty having that minor assumption in hand.Upright BiPed_{August 6, 2011
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dmullenix:
Information can be generated by chance mutations and natural selection weeds out the non-workable information and leaves the useful information – CSI.
Non-workable information? Do you mean nonsense? I'd hate to think you're one of those people that think information can be meaningless.
That one base change has given us a brand new protein, one almost identical to its predecessor, but which works much better. That’s a gain in information by any standards.
By any standards? Give us just one standard according to which this is a gain in information. And how do you know which one is the predecessor?
Apo-AIM is exactly like Apo-AI except that one base has mutated.
Why do you say one of them is a brand new protein?
The last character of message B has changed.
No it hasn't. Message B is message B. It's just different from message A. Nothing about message B has changed.
That changes the information in B.
There is no change to B, therefore there is no change to the "information in B."
That can also change the meaning of message B.
Nothing about B was changed. So there was no change in the meaning of message B.Mung_{August 6, 2011
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Joseph at 48: Me: A: CATGCATGCATG and you change it to B: CATGCATGCATT you haven’t generated new information? Joseph: “What information? I am an information technologist and no one in my industry would confuse what you posted for information.” DM: Assume they’re both ASCII text messages. If you send message A, can you send message B by saying “Copy message A”? No, because they are different. The last character of message B has changed. That changes the information in B. That can also change the meaning of message B. Dembski explains how to calculate the total information in the two messages at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm . He says that “the information in both A and B jointly is the information in A plus the information in B that is not in A”, so the total information in the two messages is CATGCATGCATGT, a gain of one character. I mentioned Apolipoprotein AI (Apo-AI) and Apolipoprotein AIM (Apo-AIM). Apolipoprotein is the main ingredient in High Density Lipoprotein or HDL. HDL is the “good” cholesterol because it cleans the arteries. Apo-AIM is exactly like Apo-AI except that one base has mutated. Apo-AIM is much better at removing cholesterol from arteries than Apo-AI and protects against heart disease and stroke. People lucky enough to have it live longer than the rest of us. That one base change has given us a brand new protein, one almost identical to its predecessor, but which works much better. That’s a gain in information by any standards. Information can be generated by chance mutations and natural selection weeds out the non-workable information and leaves the useful information - CSI.dmullenix_{August 6, 2011
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You really love your schoolyard ‘manners’, don’t you?
I do think it's more honest than trying to cloak bad manners in a guise of civility.Mung_{August 6, 2011
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"When you wind that back to the first living entity you don’t find a paradox, you find a straightforward logioal contradiction." Correct but...one that expresses a possible truth.” This is paradox: No plausible scenario exists for the production of CSI and IC by a non-living entity. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. The laws of nature are not living entities The laws of nature producing CSI and IC is not a plausible scenario. -- This is incoherent: A married bachelor.junkdnaforlife_{August 6, 2011
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FG: Pardon a short intervention and a link. Your problem is in your misunderstanding of cause and even of life. Cf the discussion here, with the particular issue highlighted by Plato at point 25. (This also comes up in the Designer thread where you made some similarish remarks.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 6, 2011
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Look, unless you allow for the possibility of non-living intelligent agents, Barry's argument very clearly and unambiguously equals to saying that only living entities can create living entities. When you wind that back to the first living entity you don't find a paradox, you find a straightforward logioal contradiction. The solution is not to play with words and pretend that calling a logical contradiction a paradox is going to make the problem go away. The solution is to not make the argument in the form presented by Barry. Specifically, not to make the argument in the absolute and universal sense but only make it for local and specific cases. The consequence of that, though, is that the argument cannot be used as a categorical denial of the possibility that Life originated from a previous non-living entity. And if one disallows non-living intelligence, therefore the origin of Life could potentially include a non-living non-intelligent entity. Which rather limits its use in the debate against Darwinism, I guess. fGfaded_Glory_{August 6, 2011
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fg, i wouldn't say (as it stands now), that it is incoherent as much as it is a paradox. "1)a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth." -- No plausible scenario exists for the production of CSI and IC by a non-living entity. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. The laws of nature are not living entities The laws of nature producing CSI and IC is not a plausible scenario.junkdnaforlife_{August 6, 2011
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Mung: You really love your schoolyard 'manners', don't you? Anyway, let's look at your objections: 1. CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities. Your response: "While true, it doesn’t do justice to Barry’s claim. Chance + Necessity would include living things. Evolution. Requires biological life." So you agree my premise 1 is true. Good, I thought you would. It doesn't matter if it does justice to Barry's claim, because what I am doing here is using Barry's exact same reasoning on a somewhat different set of premises, yet premises that I think most ID-ers will agree with. This one you agree with. Fine. 2. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. Your response: "Intelligent agents, not living entities. So unless you’re going to argue that all living entities are intelligent agents and all living entities are routinely observed to produce CSI and IC." When I say: CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities - you dispute this? You say it is not true that CSI and IC are routinely observed to be produced by living entities? Does that mean that there are cases where CSI and IC are being prodced by non-living entities? I'm surprised you take that position, because it is one that virtually all ID proponents contest. If you want to build a third argument using 'íntelligent agents' instead of 'living entities', feel free, but that does not invalidate mine. My point still stands, whether you think it is stupid or not: the argument fails because it leads to a logical absurdity. It is therefore wrong. The problem could be in the premises, or in the reasoning, or in both. Personally I think the problem lies in both. Premise 1 assumes the conclusion, and the reasoning excludes the possibility that there are other sources of life then pre-existing life. I think Barry's argument fails for the same reasons. While it may be true for some instances, it is not universally true - indeed it cannot be universally true, and therefore as a scientific hypothesis it is simply incorrectly formulated. fGfaded_Glory_{August 5, 2011
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f_g:
So now I am stupid?
How you turned my statement that you can't be that stupid into an assertion that you are stupid is beyond me. But you're doing a good job of settling the question one way or the other. Barry:
CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two.
You:
CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities.
While true, it doesn't do justice to Barry's claim. Chance + Necessity would include living things. Evolution. Requires biological life. Barry's argument lacks the mutually exclusive that you're trying to smuggle in. Barry: CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents. You:
Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities.
Intelligent agents, not living entities. So unless you're going to argue that all living entities are intelligent agents and all living entities are routinely observed to produce CSI and IC. I suppose I could have been wrong about you. Let's see how long you hang on to your absurd and STUPID argument.Mung_{August 5, 2011
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Here's another way of explaining why it's not absurd. I must exist to create something that exists. You could rephrase that as, "Only existence can create existence," and then it sounds funny, as if existence is creating itself. But I'm not creating "existence." I'm just creating something that exists. Likewise, rather than saying that only life can design life, I would say that only something alive can design something alive. (I don't offer that as an absolute statement. That's not the point.)ScottAndrews_{August 5, 2011
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fg, It's logically incomprehensible. (For me, at least.) But it's not absurd because any explanation for our existence or anything's faces the same challenge. Everything that exists requires a cause that also existed. Including or excluding intelligence makes no difference. We could use that logic to refute any explanation of anything. Why did the house catch fire? Where did the match come from? Where did the tree come from? Where did the earth come from, etc. I don't understand it. But I understand that matches start fires.ScottAndrews_{August 5, 2011
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Let's back up for a moment. Using my version of Barry's argument with assumptions that I think most ID-ers would agree with, leads to the conclusion that whatever designed first life was already alive. You don't think this is a logical absurdity? fGfaded_Glory_{August 5, 2011
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fg, My version of Barry’s argument fails at the Origin of Life because we can’t allow for a living entity before then to design Life without being hopelessly incoherent. Do you agree on that? No, that's where the hangup is. It does not follow that for someone to design a life, that they must also design their own life. It's not incoherent.ScottAndrews_{August 5, 2011
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Ok let me try to clarify. My version of Barry's argument fails at the Origin of Life because we can't allow for a living entity before then to design Life without being hopelessly incoherent. Do you agree on that? Your suggestion to get round this, if I understand you correctly, is not to disagree with my assumptions, nor with the logical reasoning in the argument (which is exactly the same as Barry's), but to suggest that perhaps there are different kinds of life, i.e. maybe there was a somewhat different living entity already in existence at the origin of Life that could create the living things in the sense Barry uses the term (i.e. with lots of CSI and IC). Ok? If this is so, this particular living entity could not itself have lots of CSI and IC, ok? Otherwise we would be straight back into the logical incoherence. So basically you say: perhaps right at the beginning of Life there was a very simpe life form, one without lots of CSI and IC, that created the more complicated life forms as we know them, the ones wih lots of CSI and IC (as per Barry's argument). Ok? Congratulations - you've just described evolution in its earliest stages. fGfaded_Glory_{August 5, 2011
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fg, Sorry, you lost me. You have returned the favor.ScottAndrews_{August 5, 2011
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Scott: Your assumption is that the life that was designed is the the same as the life that designed it. Can’t one life design another? ------------ Sorry, you lost me. What kind of life do you refer to (the kind doing the designing) that doesn't contain the CSI and IC Barry observes even in the simplest of living things? fGfaded_Glory_{August 5, 2011
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fg, Here's where your logic is flawed. Is ID agnostic about the orgin of life? Or does it claim that the origin of life is Intelligent Design? And then it follows that the designer is alive, so how did anyone design their own life? Your assumption is that the life that was designed is the the same as the life that designed it. Can't one life design another? The problem goes away with the assumption. Please don't ask who designed the designer unless you can explain reality without confronting infinite regression.ScottAndrews_{August 5, 2011
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08
46
AM
PDT}

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