To Save Time Barry Argues Both Sides

_{Barry Arrington

August 4, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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In comment [25] to my last post , The ID hypothesis, Elizabeth Liddle asks about information. I think I’ve been at this long enough to predict how an exchange between me and Elizabeth would go.

Barry’s Point 1:
Let’s take the information in your comment [25]. I am sure you will agree your comment contains specified complex information. Indeed, your one little comment contains more specified complex information than we could reasonably attribute to chance and necessity working from the beginning of the universe to this moment.

Barry’s Point 2:
I am sure you will agree that the cells in your body contain more complex specified information than your comment by several orders of magnitude.

Barry’s Question to Elizabeth:
If your comment contains more specified complex information than we could reasonably attribute to chance and necessity working from the beginning of the universe to this moment, and the cells in your body contain several orders of magnitude more complex specified information than your comment, why should we attribute the complex specified information in your body to chance and necessity? Isn’t it more reasonable to attribute the CSI in the cells in your body to intelligent agency, just as we attribute the CSI in comment [25] to intelligent agency?

Elizabeth’s Probable Response 1:
The CSI in the cells in my body can reasonably be attributed to the accretion of random errors.

Barry’s Response to Her Probable Response 1:
Surely you don’t believe your comment [25] could reasonably be attributed to random key strokes by our proverbial monkey. That has a sort of first blush plausibility, but as we all know the math does not work. Then why do you attribute the CSI in the cells in your body to the accretion of random errors?

Elizabeth’s Probable Response 2:
Well, it’s not just random chance. The good random errors are selected for by natural selection and bad random errors are eliminated by natural selection. So it is not pure chance. It is chance (random genetic errors) and necessity (natural selection) combined that results in the CSI.

Barry’s response to her Probable Response 2:
What an extraordinary claim! This remarkable interaction of chance and necessity to which you allude has never been observed even over trillions of reproductive events by bacteria under intense selective pressure. What non-question begging evidence do you have for your remarkable assertion? Remember, Dawkins says that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And surely you will agree that saying the staggering amounts of CSI in living things is the result of the accretion of random errors sorted by natural selection is the most extraordinary claim ever made.

Elizabeth’s Probable Response 3:
Let’s change the subject.

Comments

Mung @ 171, Have you thought what you’ve written through carefully enough? (To be sure, it must be admitted that the statement you quote and comment upon is logically horrendous, and in practical terms, is just a restatement of materialism) Sure, it is true that "the information is not the state of the ball being red". But, it is not true that "The information is what has changed my knowledge about the ball, and if my knowledge has not changed, there is no information”. To summarize your post, "If one's knowledge has not changed, then one has not received information" is not true -- pace the way ‘Shannon information’ is commonly discussed (falsely so, in my opinion), ‘information’ does not equal, nor require, “surprise”. ‘Information’ is any proposition or set of propositions with the potential to "inform a mind" (as you like to put it) -- 'information' is: 1) propositional -- 'information' is a set of one or more statements saying something about some thing; 2) true -- properly speaking, 'information' is a set of true statement(s) about some thing -- in contrast to 'disinformation' ... but, in practice, we cannot always distinguish false statements from true; and so it is ok to use the term 'information' to encompass propositions that might be true; 3) known -- 'information' is (necessarily) known to at least one mind ... it may be shared with other minds; it may be "hoarded" by the mind who knows it. To put it another way, the set of 'unknown proposition(s)' is an empty set; there is no such thing as a proposition that is wholly unknown by any mind whatsoever (the set of 'propositions unknown to me' is a different matter, altogether).Ilion_{August 9, 2011
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Red Balls of Information! Upright BiPed:
So if I hand you a piece of paper that says “the ball is red”, the information is not me, its not you, its not the English convention, it’s not the symbols on the paper, and it’s not the paper itself. A reasonable conclusion is that the information is the state of the ball, being red.
- to form the mind If I did not know before that the ball was red, then I would become informed that the ball was red. If I already know that the ball is red, I would not become informed that the ball is red. You cannot become informed about something you already know. Yet nothing about the ball itself has changed. It follows that the information is not the state of the ball being red. The information is what has changed my knowledge about the ball, and if my knowledge has not changed, there is no information. Knowledge is what you have once you have been informed. You now know something you did not know before. Information becomes knowledge and ceases to be information.Mung_{August 9, 2011
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My point Elizabeth, is that you can post the very material that demonstrates the point being made while at the same time denying that it does so. The point is, that you can make the exact same argument that I did, and then assert that I am wrong. From the clock vid, here is the clear progression, each time: 6:12 Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks Eventually 3 handed clocks dominate Simulation Run #2 (7:16) Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks The age of pendulums was shorter, but we still ended with 3 handed clocks Simulation Run #3 (7:31) Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks This time we had a brief apeparance of 4 handed clocks, but the 3 handed clocks eventually dominated.
But you still haven't made your point! You've just asserted that you've made it. I don't get it, Mung. You will have to spell it out. These oblique remarks do not cut the mustard. Yes, we both agree, it seems, about what the program does. You seem to think this makes some point. I don't know what point you think it makes. I have told you what point I think it makes, and you have not rebutted it, so I'll make it again: The program shows that with just two ingredients, 1. A population of self-replicators that replicate with variance 2. An environment in which being able to perform some function increases the chances of breeding that function reliably evolves. In other words, that rm+ns works. Now, what is your point.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 9, 2011
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Information and Meaning "If we are smart, we will doggedly resist any impulse to think closely about meaning. On the other hand, if we were smart, we probably would not have gotten bogged down in the contemplation of information in the first place." - Robert WrightMung_{August 9, 2011
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My point Elizabeth, is that you can post the very material that demonstrates the point being made while at the same time denying that it does so. The point is, that you can make the exact same argument that I did, and then assert that I am wrong. From the clock vid, here is the clear progression, each time: 6:12 Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks Eventually 3 handed clocks dominate Simulation Run #2 (7:16) Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks The age of pendulums was shorter, but we still ended with 3 handed clocks Simulation Run #3 (7:31) Pendulum only proto-clock 1 handed clock 2 handed clock 3 handed clocks This time we had a brief apeparance of 4 handed clocks, but the 3 handed clocks eventually dominated.Mung_{August 9, 2011
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Mung, what is your point?Elizabeth Liddle_{August 9, 2011
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EL @ 161 (referring to my post 158): "Ilion: You are mistaking the territory for the map." Now that is just too funny, really. EL alleges that she has found a "map" of (an imaginary) "territory" -- and, on the basis of "the map", avers that "the territory" is real and reachable. Without at the time making an issue of the imaginary nature of "the territory", I point out the "the (alleged) map" does not, and cannot ever, in principle, map to "the (alleged) territory". And EL "refutes" what I have said by waving her not-so-dainty hands, and accusing of the very thing she is insisting upon doing. Are not DarwinDefenders the most amazing persons who have ever lived?Ilion_{August 9, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
My guess is that it turns out to be a both a sufficient and necessary feature for time-telling, given the physics-and-chemistry of the model. Wouldn’t you agree?
Are you like just not capable of comprehending simple arguments? Of course I agree! That's precisely the point I've been asserting, that you have been disputing, and now you ask don't I agree? lol wow And still operating from memory, why is it that his clocks always seem to end up with hands? just coincidence? That's certainly not a necessary condition, as the example of the pendulum shows. Yet there they are, clocks with hands. like clock-work. time after time.Mung_{August 9, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
Same reason as photosensitive cells probably always precede the evolution of eye-pits or lenses.
lol. sure. if you want to believe that.Mung_{August 9, 2011
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Well, now, Mung, why do you think? My guess is that it turns out to be a both a sufficient and necessary feature for time-telling, given the physics-and-chemistry of the model. Wouldn't you agree? Same reason as photosensitive cells probably always precede the evolution of eye-pits or lenses. A necessary first step up Mount Improbable.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 9, 2011
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Well, Elizabeth, I can do at least one from memory, perhaps even more. Why do his clocks always start out as pendulums?Mung_{August 9, 2011
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I look forward to it Mung. Ilion: You are mistaking the territory for the map.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 9, 2011
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And to add insult to injury, if you watch the linked video, you can actually see the very principles stated by Ilion in action. It's like clockwork. Really. The refutation of Elizabeth's claims are right there before her eyes, and she denies the very evidence before her eyes. Just watch the portion towards the end where it shows the results of repeated runs. Tomorrow I'll post the actual times and text from the vid. H.T. Ilion for the reminder.Mung_{August 8, 2011
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Concerning the "I'm just asking questions; I just want a converstaion" game that some persons like to play ... a recent post reminded me of a better way that I usually manage to communicate my objection to, and disdain for, the pose; to paraphrase C S Lewis -- "Once you were a child and asked questions because you wanted answers," said the Spirit to the Bishop. "Ah, but when I became a man, I put away childish things," replied the Bishop with a superior smile. The point being that the poseurs playing the "I'm just asking questions" game do not want answers -- they do not want to themselves posses answers and they do not want that you might possess answers. They want only the destruction of answers.Ilion_{August 8, 2011
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Mung: "The potential solutions are programmed in, by design." The perpetually honest-to-a-fault (!) EL @ 140: "No they aren’t They are possible (they exist in the search space, obviously, because they are found), but nothing except the Darwinian algorithm “programs them in”." Mung: "So is the path to each potential solution. Programmed in, by design." The perpetually honest-to-a-fault (!) EL @ 140: "No. The only program that “designs” the search path is the Darwinian one." Mung: "We know something will be found by the search, we just don’t know what, specifically, in advance." The perpetually honest-to-a-fault (!) EL @ 140: "Yes, we do know that, and the reason we know that is that we know that Darwinian search works." In these assertions, El is either unbelievably ignorant -- or, as a logical possibility, but which I am positive does not apply, too stupid for words -- or simply partisanly dishonest. If her false assertions were founded on honest ignorance, she could be corrected on the matter; but, as she will not accept correction, reasonable persons must conclude that she is intellectually dishonest. === The potential outputs/results of any computer program are *always* implicit in the logic; and, if this were not so, we would not use them, nor could we get any useful result/work from them. Consider the two following functions, X and Y -- public static void X(int input) { return 5; } public static void Y(int input) { return (input / 2) * 5; } Now, X always returns the value ‘5’, regardless of any input given it; while Y always returns the value ‘5’ when given the inputs ‘2’ or ‘3’ - and, given any specific input, Y will always return exactly the same output, no matter how many times one tests the assertion I’ve just made. With respect to these two functions, what the perpetually honest-to-a-fault EL is asserting is that only for function X is the solution, such as it is, “programmed in”. This assertion is false, as any moderately intelligent person can clearly see, and as any moderately intelligent person who is also intellectually honest will admit. For, the output of neither function exists until it is executed and an input given it. It just happens to be the case that X always returns ‘5’ as its output, regardless of its input at any particular execution; whereas the output of Y at any particular execution always follows mathematically, and exactly, from its input, such that no matter how many times one executes the function giving it the input '10', it will always return '25'. There is no number named ‘input’ - just as there is no number named ‘random’ - there are only specific-and-actual numbers (and in these two cases, the functions “know” only integer numbers); and thus, the statement “return (input / 2) * 5” is just a place-holder until “input” is replaced by some actual integer. So, IF someone wants to tell me that he or she *still* cannot grasp that all potential results of *any* computer function/program are fully specified by its logic (that is, as Mung put it, "The potential solutions are programmed in, by design."), THEN I must reply, “If your claim to be unable to understand and grasp the inescapable truth of what I just have said is true, THEN what you are telling me is that you are incorrigibly stupid. In that case, frankly, I am surprised that you do not drown in your own spittle” And, should some silly, or foolish, person try to object to what I have said on the basis of “random numbers”, why not save yourself the bandwidth (and spare yourself the mockery)?, for I have *already* covered that objection. ==== Consider again the perpetually honest-to-a-fault EL; specifically, consider my post @ 117 and her response @ 119 -- clearly, she already understand what I have explicitly spelled out in this post -- and *still* she asserts the falsehoods she asserts (and, moreover, these particular falsehoods are not contingent; there is no possible world in which her assertion might have been true).Ilion_{August 8, 2011
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Would you believe me? Why not? There’s no theoretical reason why it couldn’t, right?
I'd believe you. Any particular GA, after all, can be applied to a wide range of problems. A GA is, after all, a highly efficient and creative problem solving algorithm. It's not like the clock-making program wouldn't make ice cream and nuclear bombs if we just gave it enough time.Mung_{August 8, 2011
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Well Barry, what's the verdict? Have you convicted yourself?Mung_{August 8, 2011
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EL: What I mean, Mike, is that if you have a problem to solve,and you set it up as a fitness function so that it can be solved by a Darwinian algorithm (which is what a GA does) then the algorithm tends to do it very efficiently – comes up with things you wouldn’t have thought of, and does so in much shorter time than you would have taken.
Right. But there are GAs and there are GAs. All GAs are not created equal even for the same design goal. If I have GA that is written to the goal of efficient antenna design, it may out perform another designed for the same goal, but neither is designed for the production of space shuttles. The question, and this is the only question, where you and I seem to be at odds: is Nature's GA (the mechanisms and means we know about) robust enough to produce all the features of life as we know it? The short answer is that it's an unknown question. When you say there are no theoretical reasons on your part why it can't, that is on par with me saying my antenna GA can also produce space shuttles. While theoretically possible (unless you spied the source code), something tells me you would be be hyper skeptical about it :)
Let’s take a problem, such as “not being eaten by predators: Camouflage....And each of those have dimensions within them.
Very high level design goals with plausible sources of realization possible given the current state of our knowledge. In the end, we have to look at the nuts and bolts of the beast to see what has to take place, if it already has the require features in some latent form or not, what it takes to get from point A to point B. In your feature list above, allele changes might be all that's necessary. This sort of evolution is known to exist and it's entirely understood how it is effected. We know whence the difference between Chihuahuas and Great Danes. We don't know how the mammalian body plan came to exist given present knowledge. In short, the devil is in the details. But I'll make the goal a lot simpler for you: give me a blow by blow description with no gaps how a flagellum could come to exist. And it's not fair to just point to this protein or that protein having already existed, as if the mere presence of parts explains the assembly of the object. I need a complete "log" of how the genome was modified, including how the order and timing of assembly came to be and all intermediate steps (which is probably more complicated a goal than the appearance of the proteins themselves). Matzke took a stab it it. I was more full of holes than swiss cheese. If you can't come up with a gap free account for how a flagellum came to exist, how can you expect skeptical engineers like me be to believe Nature's GA is responsible for the mammalian body plan? (Or novel cell types, tissue types, organs or body plans.)mike1962_{August 8, 2011
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I guess, except that there are lots of gaps that are fairly well filled, and no obvious theoretical reason why there should be longitudinal limits.
And no obvious reason why it should be a "gap filler" either. Let's say I present you with a GA (undisclosed source code) that could demonstrably design antennas. I show you the log of steps that it did for the designs. Then I make the claim that my GA designed the space shuttle. I refuse to provide you with either the source code or a log of the steps that it took. Would you believe me? Why not? There's no theoretical reason why it couldn't, right? At any rate, for the sake of discussion, I'm particularly interested in the ability of "nature's GA", if you will, to account for cell types, tissue types, organs and body plans. I'm afraid there's much more gap than not here. Maybe some antenna design going on. But space shuttles? Is Nature's GA robust enough to pull that off? Sure, there's no theoretical reason why not. This is because the question is unanswered. Your statement is merely a promissory note thinking stated in a different manner. We simply do not have sufficient information to answer the question: is Nature's GA sufficient for all the life forms on earth? Sidebar: Elizabeth, I've been reading your posts for some weeks now, and engineers don't think the way you think. At least the ones I know. And I think it comes down to a personal orientation that is clearly out of the realm of science and in the realm of psychology. I demand provenance for a grand claim and you seem to be happy to let scant evidence fill the Grand Canyon size gaps. Why is that? For one thing, engineers need designs that work. Bad design, bad product, bad financial reward, perhaps lives lost. Gaps in my world can kill people. Try using the "well, there's no theoretical reason why it can't work" excuse for an unproven design and see how far you get in the "real world." Do not take this as a slight to your character or intelligence. It just happens to be the way people think in your world and you think it's normal. To me it is anything but.
Plenty for lateral limits though, which are what we see, and which would be odd if the thing were the product of design (human design lineages don’t have lateral limits).
Why odd?mike1962_{August 8, 2011
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What I mean, Mike, is that if you have a problem to solve,and you set it up as a fitness function so that it can be solved by a Darwinian algorithm (which is what a GA does) then the algorithm tends to do it very efficiently - comes up with things you wouldn't have thought of, and does so in much shorter time than you would have taken. Specifics regarding dimensions: Let's take a problem, such as "not being eaten by predators": Camouflage early warning system faster running unpredictable movements mimicry noxious smell making yourself look big Moving like an inanimate thing And each of those have dimensions within them.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Moreover...
EL: So what do you think the limitations are on what is clearly, in principle, a highly efficient and creative problem solving algorithm?
This is a strange question. The efficiency of a GA depends on how it's written. One GA can be more efficient than another GA. A particular GA may more efficient than another at designing antennas. And neither may be applicable to improving aerodynamics of an airplane. You'd have to be specific. What GA? What application? Let's see how efficient it is for the target application.
Recalling that in living things, the dimensions along which a trait can improve fitness are many times greater than in any GA?
Specifics please.mike1962_{August 8, 2011
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I guess, except that there are lots of gaps that are fairly well filled, and no obvious theoretical reason why there should be longitudinal limits. Plenty for lateral limits though, which are what we see, and which would be odd if the thing were the product of design (human design lineages don't have lateral limits). But I agree with you about Lenski. His work is awesome.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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EL: So what do you think the limitations are on what is clearly, in principle, a highly efficient and creative problem solving algorithm?
I don't know the limits. Nobody does. I applaud efforts of Mike Behe and people like Richard Lenski who are doing things that may lead to more insight. Otherwise, it's just "Darwinism" of the Gaps.mike1962_{August 8, 2011
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Mike, thanks. Then my whinge was not at you :) I'm glad you think no-one is disputing what you are not disputing, and if you are right I withdraw my whinge. So what do you think the limitations are on what is clearly, in principle, a highly efficient and creative problem solving algorithm? Recalling that in living things, the dimensions along which a trait can improve fitness are many times greater than in any GA?Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Elizabeth L: What I find frustrating here is that when anyone produces a proof-of-principle – whether it be WEASEL or the Clock simulation – of the powers of rm+ns, the result is roundly dismissed as being too simplistic to apply to living things, which is fine.
This is a distorted characterization. Genetic Algorithms are proven techniques that use fitness functions in conjunction with random searches to find novel effects within the constraints of the fitness functions. Nobody disputes this (that I know of.) Moreover, nobody disputes (that I know of) that biological RV+NS can leads to small scale novel solutions to "problems" (nylonase, for example.) The key word here are "scale." If I write a GA that can demonstrably produce more efficient antenna designs and then set about to pawn my algorithms off as a means to building gasoline powered automobile engines that have a 97% efficiency, people are going to be skeptical. People are going to demand to see my source code to see if my fitness functions can handle such search space requirements within a reasonable time-frame. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
However, that is a massive moving of goal posts: the claim that both WEASEL and the clock simulation were devised to refute is the claim that rm+ns cannot (in the case of weasel) produce sense out of nonsense,
Nobody denies that (that I know of.) What I am skeptical of is that the known mechanisms plus environmental selection are sufficient to produce the broad swath of life on earth, in particular, novel cell types, tissue types, organs and body plans, exhibited by earth life. At present, it's an undemonstrative claim. In the weasle programs and your clock example, we can easily verify that a given "genome" was produced by the algorithms. We can just look at the steps that it tooks to get there (if we log them.) We can see that given the initial conditions, the outcome was "doable." RV+NS as an explanation for most biological forms is entirely unproven.
The clock video, in particular, falsifies the notion that rm+ns is a monkeys-on-typewriters algorithm or a needle-in-a-haystack algorithm.
Nobody claims otherwise (that I know of.) Sorting clothes by "whites" and "non-whites" achieves the same thing. And as an example, is a lot easier to grasp. Humans turn randomness into order all the time via selection criteria. So do spiders and birds when they make webs and nests. Nobody denies that (that I know of).
It demonstrates that rm+ns is an efficient search algorithm.
But it doesn't demonstrate RV+NS is responsible for grand sweep of life on earth. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.mike1962_{August 8, 2011
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Oh, and yes, - if you took the final clocks, and smashed them up, and then put mangled genomes through the process again, yup, they'd come out again as clocks. Different clocks.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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It isn't, Mung. It's ironicElizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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Here's a rather amusing point about the video. He complains that the ID types have it all wrong, that there are some very obvious issues with the argument. 1. Clocks do not reproduce 2. Clocks do not mutate 3. Clocks are not subject to natural selection 4. The components of clocks do not have natural affinities for each other like the components of cells He then goes on to create a program in which he overcomes all his objections against clocks, and calls the resulting objects in his program clocks. IOW, his argument is self-refuting. How bizarre is that? So we should be able to smash up the clocks in his program and shake them up and the parts will come back together and work just fine.Mung_{August 8, 2011
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But if anyone wants to continue talking about GAs and search space, I've started a thread here: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=98#more-98 Anyone can post, and all are welcome. Even you, Mung. Just remember to wipe your feet.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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The sense in which the organisms in the clock-making program breed, is the sense in which any pair-breeding species breeds - they pair up, and produce offspring with randomly spliced bits of the parent genotypes, i.e. they inherit traits from both parents. No, it's not for "rhetorical effect" Mung, it's for precision. Some GAs use recombination, some don't. Recombination usually works better, and its usually referred to as sexually reproducing virtual organisms because it's directly analogous. Not that your post deserves a response, frankly.Elizabeth Liddle_{August 8, 2011
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