Dr. Dembski kindly answered my inquiry. Essentially, he reiterated what he has said elsewhere, that compressibility is one of the properties that can give us a specification, functionality being another.

He has never said that incompressibility is required for or indicative of complexity, and his examples certainly belie that assertion. With no disrespect intended for Joseph, CJYman, or Stephen Meyer, I’ll side with Dr. Dembski on this.

Thank you for your very complete and clear contribution to this fundamental point. I warmly encourage everybody on this blog to carefully read your new linked discussion on CSI and causal factors.

Sometimes we get sidetracked in our discussions regarding relatively minor points, but we should from time to time get back to the true strength of the ID theory: CSI, IC, and the principles of design inference. Those are the fundamental truths which no darwinist dares address, and which will ultimately change forever the scientific scenario. We need to get back to simplicity, clarity and focus, and your contribution is a perfect example of how to do that.

DK at 63 raised the issue of snowflakes.

Given the IMHCO somewhat unsatisfactory and incomplete nature of several remarks above on this, and also other questions on CSI I decided to develop a new appendix in my always linked, on the origin, coherence and significance of the CSI concept.

As a part of that, I addressed the snowflake as a claimed counter-example to the concept. (NB: I also added a few remarks on the issue of causal factors: chance, necessity, agency; here.)

The interesting point about snowflakes is that hey partly constitute crystals, and are partly an agglomeration of crystals formed under the influence of atmospheric conditions at their time and place of formation. The crystalline structure is obviously a manifestation of order.

The complex but essentially random agglomeration is a manifestation of random complexity constrained by orderly bonding forces that push them towards the hexagonal symmetry.

Thus, in looking at his case we need to bear the two levels of structure in mind. This is rather similar to DNA and proteins: the monomers are relatively simple orderly structures, the polymers are information rich because they are functionally specified and (generally speaking) beyond the UPB’s limit of 500 – 1,000 bits of information storing capacity.

We can call that limit, the edge of chance. For, we know from a wealth of direct observation of cases of the origin of such, that CSI manifesting structures beyond that limit are the product of intelligent agency.

GEM of TKI

Maybe I can help clarify, re:

Dembski’s math explicitly says that, all else being equal, more compressible strings have more specified complexity .

Take a long enough digital element string. “Long enough” meaning that it can store at least 500 – 1,000 bits of information. Thus, it has 10^150 to 10^301 or more cells in its configuration space.

Surely, such strings can reasonably be described as contingent [for any one value instantiated, there are many other possible values that could have been instantiated] and complex [there is a “lot” of information storing capacity there].

Now, consider two alternatives:

CASE A: a random string, e.g. fiedbhvfgfjdkyfdgfjdkidgtfdigcvydosydhcklxsiud

CASE B: a meaningful text string written out in English, that is according to the rules and structures of written English

The later can be simply and detachably – and indeed, functionally, be described. The former, can in effect only be described by reproducing the string. [Even in the case of a wining lottery combination, that would hold.]

Now, on a random text generation event, something like case A is exceedingly more likely than something like Case B. But, intelligent agents routinely generate things like case B.

Indeed, sufficiently long cases like B have ONLY been generated by such agents, in our observation.

Observe how A has in it “fie,” “kid,” “iud” and “dos” but not even one seven-letter word. (I in fact simply closed my eyes then typed at random for a few seconds.)

Three-letter words and acronyms are far more common in the space of 26^3 [~ 1.76 * 10^4 config space cells] than are seven-letter words in the space 26^7 [~ 8.03 * 10^9 cells; the vocab of English was ~ 800,000 words when I was growing up and learning such trivia in the name of education]. This was of course pointed out by Denton in that 1985 ID sleeper, Evolution: A Theory in crisis.

This is significant.

Putting that more or less in the terms Prof Sewell now prefers: objects in nature do not spontaneously do macroscopically describable things that are microscopically improbable. That is, since the more chaotic macrostates are so much more likely on chance, it is maximally unlikely that we get the sort of case B outcome by chance.

The obvious challenges? First, DNA and other nanotechnologies in the cell exhibit patterns that look like case B not A, and we know that the cell’s functionality is closely coupled to he exactitude of the chemical composition and folding of its key molecules. (This has relevance tot he origin of life and to he body-plan level diversity of life.) Second, if we were to summarise the physics that apparently undergirds our life-facilitating cosmos, we see that it is a case of organised, fine-tuned complexity that would exhibit a pattern more like case B than A again. [Cf. My always linked for a discussion.]

So, why then is there such an insistence in many quarters that the observed CSI and/or IC and/or OC in the cases just pointed out “must” only be explained relative to chance + necessity only?

GEM of TKI

I can honestly say that I do not.

Well, I appreciate the effort. Since Dembski’s math explicitly says that, all else being equal, more compressible strings have more specified complexity, and since his examples reinforce this principle, I’ll try to contact Dembski directly for an explanation. Thanks for your help.

Thanks, ever so much.

GEM of TKI

Patrick, thanks for the new little statement that there is a mod piling.

A few notes on Kant, Sally_T, radical skepticism and the like:

1] SteveB, 342: I realize that this thread is flooded with distractions from the main theme which ought to have dramatized the injustice that has been visited on GG, and I agree with all those, especially kairosfocus, who lamented the fact that we simply changed direction without any good reason . . .

Sadly, on evidence of repeated refusal to address that main issue, while raising every sort of red herring and strawman one could imagine, there was indeed a reason, but not a good one: plainly, desire on the part of Evo Mat advocates to distract attention from major injustice on their party’s part. We need to draw the lesson and heed its implications.

2] Design inference does not rely on ontological presupposition . . . . no one has yet dealt with the recurring theme that design inference requires an ontological assumption.

In fact, first, it is more of a deceptive rhetorical trick in too many cases.

It is not too hard for reasonably educated people to follow a line of reasoning that is commonplace to anyone who has done a FIRST course in statistics – and that more or less includes anyone who has done a Biology major:

a] It is well-known relative to vast and commonplace experience that one or more of three common causal patterns MAY act into a given situation: [1] chance [manifesting through stochastic processes that produce statistical distributions in outcomes], [2] mechanical necessity [showing itself in observable natural regularities], [3] intentional agent action [showing itself in outcomes that are contingent and specified relative to plausible purposes of candidate agents, and in outcomes that would be improbable relative to a chance null hypothesis].

b] In cases that are dominated by contingency as opposed to fixed, regular patterns perhaps perturbed by a bit of noise, we see that we face alternatives: chance or agency. At this stage all that we have done is that we have ruled out natural regularities. (We have not assumed that agents are acting or that they actually exist, only that they are POSSIBLE and should not be assumed away — especially by selective hyperskepticism and undue burden of proof shifting — ahead of examining evidence.)

c] As a standard approach, chance based on a reasonable model is the null hypothesis. We then test the actual outcome against the pattern that the chance hyp would throw out.

d] If the actual outcome is credibly within the rejection regions, we reject the null at whatever reasonable level of confidence is appropriate. One sets the rejection regions relative to what proneness to errors are acceptable or preferred: rejecting the null when we should accept it, or accepting the null when we should reject it. [The explanatory filter cheerfully accepts many false negatives on design because of the significance of the cases it rules in; it is set up that way.]

e] Thus, we have found epistemic warrant for the hypothesis that the outcome is dominated by agent action, and that is in fact without the need to assume anything about any particular class of agent.

–> As I discuss in my always linked, [and as is commonly and easily accessible all over the Internet] Dembski and others have simply taken up this basic, commonly applied and effective Fisherian approach to statistical inference and have applied it to cases of interest to the Design theory movement. [He addresses the manufactured objection that there must be a Bayesian approach instead here and here, noting that in fact there is an excellent reason to see that we revert to Bayesian approaches because we have intuitively at least applied the Fisherian approach and see that something is fishy! [Pun not intended, at least at first . . .]]

–> What has happened is that because the results cut across the currently dominant evolutionary materialism in the Guild of scholarship, selective hyperskepticism has been applied to dispute what should be a no-brainer.

2] If Kant, the philosopher had not concluded that the image of design in the mind isn’t real, Darwin would never have dared to claim that design in nature isn’t real. According to Kant, these images of reality in the mind (in this case design) do not necessarily reflect the object that is being observed.

In fact, Kant here actually outright contradicts himself.

How can he know that it is the real case that the image of design in the mind isn’t real”? In short, he is being self-referentially inconsistent. (One could just as easily assert that the image of non-design in the mind is not “real.”)

That is, once we make a radical assertion that the world of ideas and the world of reality are radically isolated from one another, the whole project of rationality collapses.

In fact, as I have already excerpted recently, this little error in Kant has long since been exposed, e.g. In F. H. Bradley ‘s gentle but stinging opening salvo in his Appearance and Reality, 2nd Edn (Clarendon Press, 1930), p.1:

“The man who is ready to prove that metaphysical knowledge is impossible has . . . himself . . . perhaps unknowingly, entered the arena [of metaphysics] . . . . To say that reality is such that our knowledge cannot reach it, is to claim to know reality.”

On the “little errors” reference, Adler has implied as much.

3] According to Kant, these images of reality in the mind (in this case design) do not necessarily reflect the object that is being observed. Given this assumption, ID is defeated even before it enters the arena

First, all that we need to take from that, is that we are finite and fallible creatures and so all of our reasoning is subject to error. Including, all our scientific reasoning. So, we must be careful and humble, recognising that our scientific reasoning is provisional and subject to correction in light of future investigations. That of course includes a certain research programme known as the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, and the asserted “rule of procedure” methodological naturalism..

Balancing that, until and unless we have good reason to infer that we are in error in a given case, it is reasonable to be confident that reasoning based on reliable approaches is to be trusted over against radical, self-destructive global skepticism or selective application of the principles of such radicalism to reject what one does not want to believe while implicitly “exempting” those things one is inclined to believe – the fallacy of selective hyper-skepticism in short. (Simon Greenleaf’s subtly acid comment is well worth hitting the link, folks!)

4] What I am taking issue with is the claim that this [Hume-Kant] “argument has never been dealt with.”

I agree. And in fact even in my always linked asdn onward links, there are things that would address this issue, if Sally_T had been inclined to actually take up the phil issue seriously and explicitly on a level playing field comparative difficulties basis on worldview analysis matters.

She obviously was not, being insistently content to state vague assertions and dismiss what she was not wishing to face, on the main issue of injustice, and on the secondary ones she raised, including this one.

And, given the issue of blatant and indefensible injustice done to Dr Gonzalez she insistently wanted to distract us from, the reason is, sadly, obvious.

GEM of TKI