Topic: Can ID make testable predictions? (Read 5262 times)

Anthony Horvath · « **on:** October 16, 2005, 07:59:49 PM »

YES.

The question is whether or not we can reliably detect design without first assuming that it is either designed or not designed.

I offered this attempt in another thread which unfortunately Copernicus completely went off the deep end with. We'll give it another go:

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The first problem with this is the conditions and setting. Its undeniable that biology is where the fire fight is, but if ID is to have any applicability at all, it cannot be arbitrarily restrained only to biological systems. Design should be reliably detectable across various platforms.

Here is one example of a 'prediction' (I hope you read my post to Ragnar where I'm not very impressed even by 'predictions'). When you have a system that contains information critical to functioning, you can only vary that information to a limited degree or the system will cease to function or will function at a significantly decreased capacity.

An easy way to understand this is to look at a computer program. A computer program consists of coding that is critical to the functioning of said program. If the code is corrupted, conceivably even minutely, the program will very likely stop functioning.

So, ID would predict that if DNA is really information critical to functioning, then corrupting that information will cause the object to either cease functioning or function in a significantly diminished capacity.

DNA IS information critical to functioning and corrupting said information more often than not DOES cause a collapse in function, or significantly diminished capacity to function, so this is a prediction MET.

Example:

Down's Syndrome is believed to be a DNA flaw related to a problem with a single chromosome. Humans can survive with Down's Syndrome, but at a significantly diminished capacity.

We can re-state this in such a way as to not smuggle in design by use of the word 'information' which we always associate with a designer, by talking about 'content in precise equilibrium.'

So, by analogy, consider a bunch of children's toy blocks on the ground. If we come across a pile that is dumped on the ground we will see a haphazard pattern to it. But if we found 10 blocks, one perched on top of the other, we would have 'blocks in equilibrium.' Move any of the blocks even a little bit in any direction and the tower will topple. Such assembly requires deliberate manipulation. We could conceive of the possibility that when the blocks were dumped, one landed on on top of the other until it was 10 high, and still stands, but we know the probability is extraordinarily low.

In fact, we could measure the probability of such an event by constantly dropping bags of blocks to determine how high we can expect blocks to get 'on their own.' The lower the average and the higher the observed tower, the greater probability estimate, and the surer of the conclusion that some agent had to step in and MANIPULATE natural laws in order to stack them. We could, by analogy, say that this tower contains 'information,' though obviously not very much.

Similarly, if DNA is such that a small deviation one way or another 'topples the tower' and we have conducted enough tests to measure how 'high blocks tend to stack up on their own' and determine an average, we can compare that average with our observation, and so conclude that DNA is 'information,' but this time in a way that doesn't smuggle in the thing we are investigating.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #1 on:** October 16, 2005, 08:06:48 PM »

I need, apparently, to clarify something that Copernicus was unable to make click in his head:

"We can re-state this in such a way as to not smuggle in design by use of the word 'information' which we always associate with a designer, by talking about 'content in precise equilibrium.'"

Despite the fact that I am clearly on my way in the analogy to explain that we don't need to associate information with a designer, Copernicus feels that I was really saying that 'we always associate infromation with a designer.' He thought this was equivocating, because information theory obviously doesn't say that. Of course, I wasn't the one that used the term 'information theory.' What should be clear to the dispassionate reader is that I was speaking to a generality. In general, people do associate information with a designer, by way of habit. Its a pretty good general rule to live by. Nonetheless, we CAN think of information without associating it with a designer, which I go on to explain via my analogy.

In this sense, we can describe information as some sort of content that can be considered highly improbable to be arranged in such and such a way. In this sense, its an uncertainty calculation.

The reason I had gone to all this fuss was because of the obvious rebuttal sitting out there in the peanut gallery: "You assumed a designer when you invoked information, so naturally you would result in a designer as your conclusion." This would have been a valid criticism that I sought to head off at the pass.

I could not have anticipated the pedantic assault that Cop would launch.

So, let it be known that in the testable prediction I am presenting involving information, it is NOT circular reasoning or question begging.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #2 on:** October 16, 2005, 08:31:06 PM »

As some of us have some experience with computer coding, let me focus on that aspect of the analogy to explain further.

I said:
"If the code is corrupted, conceivably even minutely, the program will very likely stop functioning"

Cop objected by pointing out that you can have lots of corruptions and still have functioning. The objection fails because I SAID CONCEIVABLY EVEN MINUTELY. Any programmer knows that a period where a comma or semi colon belonged may be enough to bring a program to its knees. Its CONCEIVABLE. And, similarly, you can have that and the program can still function.

Programmers attempt to deal with such issues by building in redundancies. Cop might call them 'junk code' but perhaps this code is only called in case of an infinite loop or what not, perhaps measured by some simple lines at the beginning of the loop that says:

#let x=1
#x=x+1

and then later on
#if x=5,000 //infinite loop detected?
#go to line 500 //a line outside of the loop.

Of course, the idea in this scenario is that x was not supposed to ever get as big as 5,000.

Anyway, since we can conceive of information without implicating an agent, we need to set some boundaries as to when we observe information in a sense that would reasonably require an agent as the explanation.

In my scenario, I said:

"When you have a system that contains information critical to functioning, you can only vary that information to a limited degree or the system will cease to function or will function at a significantly decreased capacity."

Cop I think objected "But you can vary the information waaaaaaaah"

But that objection is anticipated by the clarification "you can only vary that information to a limited degree."

In other words there is a threshold to the amount of change that an information system that actually DOES SOMETHING can handle before it can no longer DO what it is trying to DO.

Let's take a very simple example that works well with the computer coding analogy that can have good applicability to boilogical systems: Reproduction.

When a program makes a copy of itself, many times it has to co-opt systems outside of itself in order to perform the trick. A virus maker may use existing Windows components to make a copy of the virus. The actual code has to borrow from these resources in order to make the duplication. In order for that component to be called, you have to, well, actually call it.

If the component is 'copyme.exe' but the virus program has 'run copymi.exe' it will not be able to make a copy of itself. Its ability to reproduce will have been castrated.

The more variables we have like that that require specific one to one correspondence in order to reproduce, the more evident it becomes that you have a system containing information. If you only have one such correspondence, one could conceive that the virus was actually only file corruption. But the more you find, the more likely it becomes obvious that the virus is really trying to do something.

Now we need to try to get at the threshold between 'this is information, but we do not need to invoke agency' and 'this is information, agency is almost certainly the cause.'

To do that, we can RUN TESTS to establish the type of information that is generated by file corruptions and other error types in order to create a reasonable baseline as to what we can expect 'natural forces' to create.

Then, if we are examining the reproductive programming of this particular file and find a large number of such one to one correspondences, where deviation means failure of the reproductive system, and this number far surpasses our baseline test, we can reasonably deduce agency.

Since we can go in and change different characters to see what the results will be, over and over again, we really can establish via testing the 'baseline.'

Then we have a number of different ways to go (Cop will read this: WE ONLY HAVE ONE WAY TO GO). One of those ways would be to take systems we know to be intelligently designed and count how many one to one correspondences we find in their information systems, and compare that to the system in question.

I suppose its best that I stop here.

cimics · « **Reply #3 on:** October 16, 2005, 09:19:57 PM »

Wouldn't one prediction of ID be that "junk DNA" and "vestigial organs" actually still perform some function, or at least would perform some function in the appropriate environment? (Maybe that's two predictions :) )

Copernicus · « **Reply #4 on:** October 16, 2005, 10:27:08 PM »

Quote from: cimic

Wouldn't one prediction of ID be that "junk DNA" and "vestigial organs" actually still perform some function, or at least would perform some function in the appropriate environment? (Maybe that's two predictions :) )

I would think so, cimic, but nothing is simple. Organs also tend to assume multiple and redundant functions, so the true picture is complicated. We know that humans can live without appendixes and that the organ often leads to illness and death. On the other hand, some have argued that it still plays some beneficial role in humans. Intelligently designed artifacts tend to have much cleaner and simpler designs, because humans optimize designs. In the absence of an intelligent designer, evolution leaves lots of junk around to disappear slowly or assume different roles in the promotion of survival.

Sntjohnnny, I'll read and try to respond when I can, but I'll be absent for the next week on a business trip. Don't know what chance I'll get to respond.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #5 on:** October 16, 2005, 10:59:42 PM »

Be safe, my friend.

Ragnar · « **Reply #6 on:** October 16, 2005, 11:40:41 PM »

I might have missed it in that big long other debate you were having, but I was still waiting for you address those points that Cop just made again. Namely, how do you explain things like Down Syndrome and the appendix if humans were designed?

cimics · « **Reply #7 on:** October 17, 2005, 06:59:44 AM »

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I would think so, cimics, but nothing is simple. Organs also tend to assume multiple and redundant functions, so the true picture is complicated. We know that humans can live without appendixes and that the organ often leads to illness and death. On the other hand, some have argued that it still plays some beneficial role in humans. Intelligently designed artifacts tend to have much cleaner and simpler designs, because humans optimize designs. In the absence of an intelligent designer, evolution leaves lots of junk around to disappear slowly or assume different roles in the promotion of survival.

But how do you know that what appears to YOU as "junk" isn't a very clever design with built-in redundancies and optimizations made by someone who knows far more about biology than humans do at this point? Is there perhaps a great deal of subjectivity in your assessment that the designs are not clean and simple? And perhaps clean and simple is overrated, if complex and redundant functions better or is more fail-safe than the "clean and simple" design.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #8 on:** October 17, 2005, 08:52:15 AM »

Ragnar, reference the 'deist' type distinction that sadly ended up muddling up Cop's understanding of my position. This particular thread is only presenting a testable prediction, and not dealing with the wider positions of the ID folks, to which your question would speak to.

Copernicus · « **Reply #9 on:** October 20, 2005, 07:47:07 PM »

Quote from: cimic

But how do you know that what appears to YOU as "junk" isn't a very clever design with built-in redundancies and optimizations made by someone who knows far more about biology than humans do at this point? Is there perhaps a great deal of subjectivity in your assessment that the designs are not clean and simple? And perhaps clean and simple is overrated, if complex and redundant functions better or is more fail-safe than the "clean and simple" design.

Cimic, I explained the nature of the "junk" as nonfunctional material. Your argument is that it might have some hidden function that I am unaware of, and this could certainly be true. I am content to rest my case on the lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions. Such messy designs are as common in biological evolution as they are scarce in human designs. So there doesn't seem to be any support for your claim other than a desire on your part to avoid conceding mine. And my claim is that the messiness is exactly what evolution theory predicts.

Sntjohnnny, please remove the macro expansions for your and cimic's names. I understand that it is a practical joke, but it makes me uncomfortable to post messages with content that I did not put in them

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #10 on:** October 20, 2005, 07:55:32 PM »

Gosh. We must have different perspectives on Microsoft's operating systems.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #11 on:** October 20, 2005, 07:57:31 PM »

As you know, I live to obey your every whim, so I'll hop right on the expansion matter. Beginning with Copernicus the Man with the Stiff Upper Lip.

Broken · « **Reply #12 on:** October 21, 2005, 04:55:34 PM »

Quote from: Copernicus

Quote from: Cimic
But how do you know that what appears to YOU as "junk" isn't a very clever design with built-in redundancies and optimizations made by someone who knows far more about biology than humans do at this point? Is there perhaps a great deal of subjectivity in your assessment that the designs are not clean and simple? And perhaps clean and simple is overrated, if complex and redundant functions better or is more fail-safe than the "clean and simple" design.

Cimic, I explained the nature of the "junk" as nonfunctional material. Your argument is that it might have some hidden function that I am unaware of, and this could certainly be true. I am content to rest my case on the lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions. Such messy designs are as common in biological evolution as they are scarce in human designs. So there doesn't seem to be any support for your claim other than a desire on your part to avoid conceding mine. And my claim is that the messiness is exactly what evolution theory predicts.

Concerning the nature of "junk DNA", I started a thread on the genetic differences between humans and chimps. Considering the 96% match between human and chimp genomes, it is practical to isolate the exact genes which are different between the two species.

In many cases, the exact cause of the gene differences has already been identified. Transposable DNA elements (transposons) have been found which are present in humans and absent in chimpanzees. Some of these transposons are inserted in working genes.

Half of all the DNA differences between humans and chimps are due to point mutations: the change of a single DNA nucleotide from one letter of the DNA alphabet (A,T,C,G) to another. Only about 2% of these point mutations lie in regions which code for proteins. The rest of the point defects are in regulatory and non-gene DNA. Most point defects in protein-coding DNA have little or no effect on protein function.

In the next five years or so, the phenotypic effect of the genome differences between man and chimp will be determined. For example, there is a known difference in a gene which controls development of the speech centers of the brain.

If the cause of the significant genome differences cannot be identified in terms of known natural mechanisms, IDers may have something to build a theory on. Otherwise, you can kiss ID goodbye.

Copernicus · « **Reply #13 on:** October 21, 2005, 06:28:50 PM »

Quote from: Broken

If the cause of the significant genome differences cannot be identified in terms of known natural mechanisms, IDers may have something to build a theory on. Otherwise, you can kiss ID goodbye.

And that is the real difference between evolution and IDism. IDers don't really predict that this particular prediction by evolutionists will fail, but they would dance for joy if it did. They will always have some other gaps in our knowledge of biological development and claim that THOSE gaps can't be explained. Something has to be forever inexplicable for them to stay in the game, and we will always come up with phenomena that remain to be unexplained. God is forever hiding in the gaps in our knowledge.

Copernicus · « **Reply #14 on:** October 21, 2005, 06:30:01 PM »

Let me now try to address the central question in this thread. Unlike "information", people use the word "design" in a way that does always imply an intelligent agency of some sort. I don't prefer that usage, but Richard Dawkins, for example, does. I don't want to get into a semantic dispute on either "design" or "information", so let's just stipulate that there can be physical systems that have function "designed" into them by some process. The dispute is over whether that process requires reference to an intelligent agent in order to explain its existence.

Lets take the example of a pile of rocks. One could speak of the lower layer of rocks as fulfilling a "function" in the pile. That function is to keep other rocks in the pile further away from a gravity source. So, in a way, one could talk about the design of a pile of rocks and the function of any particular rock in the "pile of rock" system. Conceivably, removal of one of the bottom rocks could cause the entire pile to become unstable and disolve into a set of scattered rocks that fail to qualify as a "pile" system. It is not necessary to believe that an intelligent agency assembled any particular pile of rocks with such a systemic role assigned to rocks in this way, but there have been humans who have mistakenly seen actual specific piles of rocks as having such intelligent design. I would say that such piles were not designed by an intelligent agent but by forces of nature.

Some natural designs can be extremely complex and beautiful to human eyes. For example, snowflakes seem to have incredibly complex internal designs, but most educated people nowadays do not attribute them to an imaginary Suzy Snowflake designer.

Quote from: sntjohnny

The question is whether or not we can reliably detect design without first assuming that it is either designed or not designed.

OK, but you are using "not designed" in the same meaning as my expression "naturally designed". I also use "artificial design" as a rough synonym of "intelligent design", although the intelligent agency may only have indirectly caused the artifical design.

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Here is one example of a 'prediction' (I hope you read my post to Ragnar where I'm not very impressed even by 'predictions'). When you have a system that contains information critical to functioning, you can only vary that information to a limited degree or the system will cease to function or will function at a significantly decreased capacity.

This is too vague a description to be considered a prediction. You need to specify what kind of information you are talking about and what type of functions. For example, a rock pile can be seen as a system of information regarding physical properties of rocks, gravitation, orientation to and distance from a gravity source, and so on. You imply that there are degrees of limitation that one could impose on such systems in order to distinguish intelligent from natural designs. Presumably, the rock pile would usually fail to cross the 'threshold' of criteria for intelligent agency. You need to state precisely what that threshold is. Behe tried to do that with irreducible complexity, and he got burned. He gave examples of structures that failed to meet his criteria of irreducible complexity. (And he also failed to take into account the amount of functional ambiguity in biological systems, but that's another issue.)

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An easy way to understand this is to look at a computer program. A computer program consists of coding that is critical to the functioning of said program. If the code is corrupted, conceivably even minutely, the program will very likely stop functioning.

So, ID would predict that if DNA is really information critical to functioning, then corrupting that information will cause the object to either cease functioning or function in a significantly diminished capacity.

The problem is that you have not specified any criterion for distinguishing the complexity of naturally evolved systems and artificially designed systems. So we fall back on the question of just how complex the "code" has to be before one can say that it had to be intelligently designed. What is the nature of that complexity? We can certainly write programs to describe the fractal patterns that we find in snowflakes or other complex objects. That does not mean that the information we see in those patterns had to have been intelligently designed. Fractal patterns can be described by means of recursive algorithms.

It has been proposed (by me and others) that intelligently designed complexity can be distinguished from artifical complexity on the grounds that intelligent designers consciously remove nonfunctional parts of the design. This is what got us into the discussion of programming errors as equivalent to nonfunctional code in human programs. One might argue that "junk code" is equivalent to the nonfunctional aspects of biological designs. In the context of that analogy, I would make a couple of rebuttals. First of all, the alleged "intelligent designer", despite frequent denials by IDists, is really an infallible God. One would not expect to find programming errors in the creations of an infallible God. (This point has been made before by defenders of evolution in debates with creationists and IDists.) Secondly, programming errors, when discovered by so-called intelligent programmers, are invariably removed immediately. Biological organisms always contain deficiencies of some sort that work against survival chances, but the elimination of those deficiencies only happens slowly--as those competing organisms that have less of the defect survive to produce more offspring. Nobody is there to remove them immediately. Moreover, the code that is unnecessary--that which fails to destroy a critical function of some sort but also fails to play any functional role--hangs around forever. Again, there is no intelligent programmer to remove the "no-ops".

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Down's Syndrome is believed to be a DNA flaw related to a problem with a single chromosome. Humans can survive with Down's Syndrome, but at a significantly diminished capacity.

Quite so. What does Down Syndrome tell us about Intelligent Design?

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We can re-state this in such a way as to not smuggle in design by use of the word 'information' which we always associate with a designer, by talking about 'content in precise equilibrium.'

So, by analogy, consider a bunch of children's toy blocks on the ground. If we come across a pile that is dumped on the ground we will see a haphazard pattern to it. But if we found 10 blocks, one perched on top of the other, we would have 'blocks in equilibrium.' Move any of the blocks even a little bit in any direction and the tower will topple. Such assembly requires deliberate manipulation. We could conceive of the possibility that when the blocks were dumped, one landed on on top of the other until it was 10 high, and still stands, but we know the probability is extraordinarily low.

Yes, but that is based on our knowledge about children's toy blocks and the usual processes that create such stacks (i.e. intelligent babies who like to stack blocks). It is not about a naturally occurring stack of things (e.g. balancing rocks) that can reasonably be expected to emerge by natural forces over large periods of time. Evolutionary "design" is about natural forces that act on organisms over large periods of time. You cannot look at biological complexity and claim that it is analogous to the complexity produced by intelligent beings in relatively short spans of time.

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In fact, we could measure the probability of such an event by constantly dropping bags of blocks to determine how high we can expect blocks to get 'on their own.' The lower the average and the higher the observed tower, the greater probability estimate, and the surer of the conclusion that some agent had to step in and MANIPULATE natural laws in order to stack them. We could, by analogy, say that this tower contains 'information,' though obviously not very much.

Your experiment would only tell us about the probability of such structures within a relatively small collection of random events. Expand the search space, and you will come to a point where it is reasonable to expect such a stack to occur somewhere in that large collection of events.

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Similarly, if DNA is such that a small deviation one way or another 'topples the tower' and we have conducted enough tests to measure how 'high blocks tend to stack up on their own' and determine an average, we can compare that average with our observation, and so conclude that DNA is 'information,' but this time in a way that doesn't smuggle in the thing we are investigating.

Be very careful here. DNA is part of a self-replicating process. The stack of blocks scenario does not address that kind of phenomenon, but it is key to the understanding of evolutionary design. DNA is itself thought to have been the result of self-replicating processes over extremely long periods of time. One hypothesis is that it evolved out of RNA.

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...In other words there is a threshold to the amount of change that an information system that actually DOES SOMETHING can handle before it can no longer DO what it is trying to DO.

Is there? What is that threshold? You never specify it. You can come up with an arbitrary measure of complexity, such as Behe once did, but then you run up against the problem of making a falsifiable claim: that people will be able to falsify it. He paid the price for that mistake. It is much better to stay vague and abstract, as you are doing here. But then you subject yourself to the criticism that your claim is untestable and thus not scientific.

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Let's take a very simple example that works well with the computer coding analogy that can have good applicability to boilogical systems: Reproduction.

When a program makes a copy of itself, many times it has to co-opt systems outside of itself in order to perform the trick. A virus maker may use existing Windows components to make a copy of the virus. The actual code has to borrow from these resources in order to make the duplication. In order for that component to be called, you have to, well, actually call it.

I'm not sure that I follow you. Many self-replicating programs do not co-opt external systems. Recursive functions call copies of themselves. They do not necessarily make references to programs outside of themselves. Virus programs are not simple recursive functions. They are programs that mimic other functions. For example, consider the way in which mockingbirds insert their offspring into the nests of other bird species. Their offspring then gets nurtured by the other bird species as if they were offspring of the other species. So mockingbirds are a crude form of virus. I don't quite see the point you are trying to make by this analogy.

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If the component is 'copyme.exe' but the virus program has 'run copymi.exe' it will not be able to make a copy of itself. Its ability to reproduce will have been castrated.

This is not a problem with reproduction in general so much as it is a problem with the analogy that you are trying to impose on reproduction. I know that you are trying to argue that one can test for computer viruses, but that doesn't help us to understand how one might test for intelligently designed organisms. I could argue that benign programs that make copies of themselves sometimes mutate into pathological conditions that cause buffer overflows, especially when they interact with other processes running on a system. The main difference between a so-called computer 'virus' and a self-replicating program gone bad is that the former was designed intentionally to perform its function and the latter was not. Is there any reliable method for proving that a runaway process on your machine was intelligently designed to run away or was the unintended consequence of (metaphorically speaking) natural processes running on your machine? Frankly, I doubt it.

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Now we need to try to get at the threshold between 'this is information, but we do not need to invoke agency' and 'this is information, agency is almost certainly the cause.'

To do that, we can RUN TESTS to establish the type of information that is generated by file corruptions and other error types in order to create a reasonable baseline as to what we can expect 'natural forces' to create.

Some processes can be detected as suspicious. I have programs that alert me of suspicious processes (e.g. the Black Ice firewall on my computer). These sentinel programs are seldom able to distinguish benign processes from malicious ones.

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Then, if we are examining the reproductive programming of this particular file and find a large number of such one to one correspondences, where deviation means failure of the reproductive system, and this number far surpasses our baseline test, we can reasonably deduce agency.

You can deduce that all computer code was written by an intelligent agency by direct or indirect means, and you don't need this method to do that. :) What you cannot do is show that biological reproduction is equivalent to the behavior of computer viruses such that this method of detection has an analogous method in the biological realm. You are just building metaphorical sand castles and trying to defend them from waves of reality.

This analogy does not establish that we can prove, say, DNA to have been designed by an intelligent agency of any kind, let alone an infallible god. You have not even bothered to maintain the analogy with biological reproduction, having devoted the entire discussion to entities in a computer domain (e.g. files and running processes) that have no clear analogy in the biological domain.

Broken · « **Reply #15 on:** October 21, 2005, 09:12:00 PM »

Quote from: Copernicus

Quote from: Broken
If the cause of the significant genome differences cannot be identified in terms of known natural mechanisms, IDers may have something to build a theory on. Otherwise, you can kiss ID goodbye.

And that is the real difference between evolution and IDism. IDers don't really predict that this particular prediction by evolutionists will fail, but they would dance for joy if it did. They will always have some other gaps in our knowledge of biological development and claim that THOSE gaps can't be explained. Something has to be forever inexplicable for them to stay in the game, and we will always come up with phenomena that remain to be unexplained. God is forever hiding in the gaps in our knowledge.

Yeah, but if all the differences between humans and chimps can be explained by point mutations, transposons, viral infections, etc, there ain't many gaps left. Ironic that the best proof of evolution may be the example IDers have the biggest objection to: humans and apes.

Broken · « **Reply #16 on:** October 21, 2005, 09:42:10 PM »

Quote from: sntjohnny

As some of us have some experience with computer coding, let me focus on that aspect of the analogy to explain further.

I said:
"If the code is corrupted, conceivably even minutely, the program will very likely stop functioning"

Cop objected by pointing out that you can have lots of corruptions and still have functioning. The objection fails because I SAID CONCEIVABLY EVEN MINUTELY. Any programmer knows that a period where a comma or semi colon belonged may be enough to bring a program to its knees. Its CONCEIVABLE. And, similarly, you can have that and the program can still function.

Most operating systems (OSs) have means to protect against bad programs. OSs typically firewall-off application programs so they don't corrupt OS memory. Also, most OSs seize control periodically and check if the applications are running normally. A non-responding application hogging CPU cycles is shut down.

Likewise, most cellular life has error correction for DNA faults and also can detect broken proteins. RNAs which codes for "nonsense" proteins are detected in the protein assemblers (called ribosomes) and destroyed.

I understand your point that a DNA-based system can be modified only so much before it no longer performs the original function. However, most new genes are created by "gene duplication" and/or "domain shuffling".

Gene duplication makes two copies of the same gene. One gene can still produce the original protein while the second copy is free to adapt to generate a new protein performing a new function. The evidence for this are gene families with thousands of closely related members, each of which produces a protein sometimes of radically different function.

Domain shuffling is the process whereby new proteins are made by swapping or exchanging the pieces of older proteins. Proteins in higher organisms are generally built from smaller components called domains.

Domains exist as independent proteins in simple organisms such as bacteria. Higher organisms have organized these same domains into more complex proteins, using domains as building blocks. Simply by rearranging domains, proteins with new function can be created.

Anthony Horvath · « **Reply #17 on:** October 21, 2005, 10:04:11 PM »

"people use the word "design" in a way that does always imply an intelligent agency of some sort. I don't prefer that usage, but Richard Dawkins, for example, does."

I have noted for you that I reject your 'artificial design' descriptor, and I here once again re-iterate that rejection for the record. It is a bit more than semantics, however. For example, you are contradicting yourself by saying that 'design always does' and then turning around and finding a way for it to 'not to.' This is a problem in the category of equivocation that is going to come back and bite us eventually. But having said that for the record, we can move on.

"I would say that such piles were not designed by an intelligent agent but by forces of nature."

But unless you have a methodology of your own that helps you tell the difference, this can remain only your opinion. Offering such a methodology, however, means admitting that it is possible to apply a method in order to detect the difference. If you want to go further and say that it is a scientific fact that it was the 'forces of nature' then that would make ID at least as scientific as the method you are employing.

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OK, but you are using "not designed" in the same meaning as my expression "naturally designed". I also use "artificial design" as a rough synonym of "intelligent design", although the intelligent agency may only have indirectly caused the artifical design.

This is an example of the danger of equivocation. I would suggest that now is not the time to impose your usage on the rest of the world, which you have said (again sniping at my information comment) "does always imply an intelligent agency of some sort." It would be nice to know that on such a very basic concept, we are meaning the same thing by the words we are using.

"This is too vague a description to be considered a prediction."

Not really. It just means that I was offering a principle which can be extended into different contexts. No point in over-specifying. Not to totally knock your point- I agree that given a particular system, we'd want to refine the terms of the predictive framework a little bit more.

"Presumably, the rock pile would usually fail to cross the 'threshold' of criteria for intelligent agency. You need to state precisely what that threshold is."

I explained this in the blocks analogy. In that particular example, as we could in many other examples, we could run a battery of tests appropriate for the system we are looking at in order to find out where the threshold is in that system. For example, with the blocks, I actually went and videotaped a series of tests where the blocks would only 'naturally' stack up no higher than 3 high. Then I ran a couple of designed tests, where I could get the blocks up to between 12-14 high.

This gave us the limits of the natural causes as well as the ultimate capability in terms of designed capability. We might allow some statistical ambiguity if we ever came upon some blocks stacked 5 high, but technically, given the data at hand only showed 3 high as the max, we would have good cause to consider design FIRST until proven otherwise, instead of the other way around.

This principle can be used in other contexts, as well, even though some obvious practical difficulties await us in certain systems.

"The problem is that you have not specified any criterion for distinguishing the complexity of naturally evolved systems and artificially designed systems. "

No, you're right. But that is only because I have only been trying to explain the principle to you. Obviously it would be pointless to go further if you won't even allow the validity of the technique even in principle.

So, do you acknowledge the validity of this idea in principle?

You run your empirical tests to determine what nature is observed to do. Then you run your tests to see what intelligent agents can do. Then you compare. Real simple, in my book.

"It has been proposed (by me and others) that intelligently designed complexity can be distinguished from artifical complexity on the grounds that intelligent designers consciously remove nonfunctional parts of the design."

Like the hood ornament?

"First of all, the alleged "intelligent designer", despite frequent denials by IDists, is really an infallible God."

Well, if you can't allow them to define the terms of their own argument, you are not really treating the argument with respect, just as you would not appreciate me saying that evolutionary theory is just a cover for atheism. You might say, "Well, that's simply not true, that's the difference" but I can retort the same way. Such statements as the one that I have quoted really get us nowhere. You have to take people at their words in these contexts, or simply not participate.

""Down's Syndrome is believed to be a DNA flaw related to a problem with a single chromosome. Humans can survive with Down's Syndrome, but at a significantly diminished capacity.""

"Quite so. What does Down Syndrome tell us about Intelligent Design?"

Not much, if your contention is that ID means persistent intervention. Quite a bit, if you understand that you are allowed to design something and 'let it go' without later on having people challenge that it is designed (on grounds perhaps not defined right now). Thus a house left untended will tend towards disrepair, but no one thinks on this account that it was not designed. The inference, if anything, would be that it was poor design, but not that it was NOT designed. Here we see where your persistent notion that 'despite denials' the only designer that ID refers to is an infallible designer fails to take the measure of the situation. It could be Crick's aliens that seeded our planet's life, for example. I don't recall Crick suggesting that the aliens were infallible, so he certainly wouldn't have been turned off by evidence of 'poor design.'

In terms of the biological system in question- the human one- Down's syndrome is just one deviation from the genetic code that leads to either death or significantly diminished operating capacity. There are quite a few of them, aren't there? A single mutation in the wrong place is all it takes.

But this is something we could test. With the aid of our intelligent agency (Can biologists detect when another biologist has tampered with genes? Or is any genetic tampering in principle not scientifically detectable in your view?) we can change out aspects of the genes to see what happens and get a really concrete idea about just how much deviation the human genome can tolerate.

"Yes, but that is based on our knowledge about children's toy blocks and the usual processes that create such stacks"

Actually, it was based on 30 minutes of video taped experimentation. :)

"It is not about a naturally occurring stack of things (e.g. balancing rocks) that can reasonably be expected to emerge by natural forces over large periods of time."

Well, this might be a good idea to point out the flaw in your rebuttal example. Balancing rocks such as you describe are formed by erosion. They are not built up, they are carved out. Its apples and oranges.

Your 'reasonably be expected' fails on the same 'threshold' question you have been raising in my regards. What kind of objective methodology do you have for establishing what can be 'reasonably be expected.'

"Your experiment would only tell us about the probability of such structures within a relatively small collection of random events. Expand the search space, and you will come to a point where it is reasonable to expect such a stack to occur somewhere in that large collection of events."

Why do you think this is a problem? You think it is better to not be bound to any collection of events at all? How do you know that if we expand the search space 'it is reasonable to expect' without performing the type of test I am mentioning it? If you have no intention of doing any test at all, your 'threshold' of reasonability is not rooted in any kind of empirical constraint. I am afraid I don't think its very reasonable to perform no experiments and rely on subjective notions about where the 'point' where 'it is reasonable to expect' things. At least, not from a scientific point of view.

"Be very careful here. DNA is part of a self-replicating process. The stack of blocks scenario does not address that kind of phenomenon, but it is key to the understanding of evolutionary design."

Indeed it is, but that is no hope for a rescue, because we can (and I did) come up with self-replicating processes that still undermine the your idea of 'evolutionary design.'

"DNA is itself thought to have been the result of self-replicating processes over extremely long periods of time. One hypothesis is that it evolved out of RNA."

Nothing like a string of 'is thoughts' to really bring me around to the strength of your scientific position.

"Is there? What is that threshold? You never specify it."

Again, my focus on the principle. Again, your own view is depending on a threshold. Somehow, and somewhere, you appear to be aware of what you can expect given enough time or chances or whatever, but I'll bet 10 hamburgers you can't tell me when that threshold begins or ends.

"You can come up with an arbitrary measure of complexity, such as Behe once did,"

I really have trouble comprehending how my measure is considered arbitrary, even though I have specifically explained how it is arrived at, while you manage to be able to reasonably "expect such a stack to occur somewhere in that large collection of events."

How large a collection of events, my friend?

"I'm not sure that I follow you. Many self-replicating programs do not co-opt external systems."

My emphasis is not on the co-opting of external systems, though when I think about it I wonder if I may have more there than I thought. I only used the example. I even said 'many' not 'all.' Given your propensity to really nail me on anything giving you any ambiguity, I'm surprised you missed it. My emphasis was how the program's functionality depended on accuracy at the most basic level.

In the example of calling 'copyme.exe' Any single letter of that file-name could be off, and the program simply would not reproduce. I gave the example of one letter off. The point is that when you've got a program where the whole point of it is to reproduce (as I think it would be agreed is the case for biological organisms), then an error in such a system may not be fatal to its own functioning per se, but defeats its ultimate purpose. An email virus may successfully send out emails, but it may not successfully attach itself to the emails that go out. Or, the emails won't go out- but if they had, the virus would have successfully attached. The more failure points we have the less room for error exists.

Of course, now we get into questions of redundancy.

As I said, we can go to the code and start omitting letters, or replacing them, and come up with an empirically derived assessment of just how much deviation is possible before the system doesn't work at all. Its not arbitrary.

"This is not a problem with reproduction in general so much as it is a problem with the analogy that you are trying to impose on reproduction."

Or perhaps the problem is that you are treating biological systems as a special case. I would argue that if biological systems are a special case, a singularity of sorts, where like the time preceding the 'big bang' nothing is known and yet you still wish to make pronouncements about what is known, then your position is suitably weak. If the rules you think apply to biological systems only apply to them and have no application anywhere else, I hardly even see why they deserve the time of day.

This begs the question: in human reproduction, are there examples in the genes where even a single change can end the process? We can go further, and look at the actual macro effects. In human reproduction, there are a gazillion things that happen when a woman is giving birth- never mind the 10 months gestation- where if this or that didn't happen, you would not have either a living baby or a living mother, or perhaps neither. There are a whole series of things that happen that are vital to the survival of the organism and its offspring that if they don't happen, results in 'termination.' That would be bad for evolution.

These things happen first in the genome.

""To do that, we can RUN TESTS""

"Some processes can be detected as suspicious."

You aren't following me. I am only asserting that we can look at the code itself and manipulate it in order to see how much deviation it can handle before it doesn't work at all. Somehow you've gotten on this 'virus detection' kick which is nowhere near the point I'm making. Its the same as with the blocks: you CAN run tests to establish your statistical threshold. It IS possible. It does not have to be arbitrary.

That is the main point of both my computer program example and my children's blocks analogy.

cimics · « **Reply #18 on:** October 23, 2005, 01:46:57 PM »

Quote

Cimic, I explained the nature of the "junk" as nonfunctional material. Your argument is that it might have some hidden function that I am unaware of, and this could certainly be true.

Well, my argument is that that would be a prediction of ID.

Quote

I am content to rest my case on the lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions.

That doesn't make it non-science though, does it? Just a not-(yet?)-very-well-supported theory. If we were to find hidden alternative functions than wouldn't that tend to validate ID?

And as far as your argument about "lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions", are you so sure about that? See this:

http://www.psrast.org/junkdna.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3703935.stm
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s133634.htm
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040503/full/040503-9.html

And that's just some of the first page of results from a google search for "junk dna".

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Such messy designs are as common in biological evolution as they are scarce in human designs. So there doesn't seem to be any support for your claim other than a desire on your part to avoid conceding mine. And my claim is that the messiness is exactly what evolution theory predicts.

Actually, some of those articles say that the junk DNA sequences looks a lot like a language and shares some similarities to human languages. That aside, the articles also suggest that junk DNA may actually be very important to the survivability of species. So it looks like there is support for my claim that "junk DNA" is in fact a very clever design (more than I suspected). It's looking more like your argument that the design is "messy" is simply your subjective belief, which may not in fact be supported by the science in question.

Copernicus · « **Reply #19 on:** October 23, 2005, 04:38:06 PM »

Quote from: cimics

Quote from: Copernicus
Cimic, I explained the nature of the "junk" as nonfunctional material. Your argument is that it might have some hidden function that I am unaware of, and this could certainly be true.

Well, my argument is that that would be a prediction of ID.

Not so fast. I have brought up the issue of optimization in intelligent designs and pointed out that biological designs appear not to have been optimized in the same way. ID, if it predicts anything, would predict that ALL aspects of a biological design must be functional. Evolution predicts that nonfunctional detritus will hang around in the design, not that every piece of apparent detritus really is detritus. Hence, IDists have to explain the function of every aspect of the design. In the case of severe mutations--two-headed calves, for example--they are going to have a problem explaining the function of that second head. "Two heads are better than one?"

Quote from: cimics

Quote from: Copernicus
I am content to rest my case on the lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions.

That doesn't make it non-science though, does it? Just a not-(yet?)-very-well-supported theory. If we were to find hidden alternative functions than wouldn't that tend to validate ID?

No, you need more than that. You need to show that the alternative functions could not plausibly have arisen by Darwinian means. Just because we fail to perceive an existing function, that doesn't mean that its design was guided by an intelligent agent.

Quote

And as far as your argument about "lack of plausible evidence for hidden alternative functions", are you so sure about that? See this:

http://www.psrast.org/junkdna.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3703935.stm
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s133634.htm
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040503/full/040503-9.html

And that's just some of the first page of results from a google search for "junk dna".

I am well aware of those discoveries, and I find them fascinating. Do you really believe that the discovery of new function that was obscure before supports ID? What it supports is the fact that DNA has evolved methods for improving the integrity of the self-replication process that is central to the evolutionary thesis. That kind of function actually supports evolution. The kind of "junk" I was talking about was things like vestigial limbs in whales and other aquatic mammals. What hidden modern function do you see for those traces of land-dwelling function? Biological designs are full of mess. Sometimes the mess is harmfull. Sometimes it becomes useful in another capacity. It all depends on which genetic traits win the survival lottery.

Quote

Actually, some of those articles say that the junk DNA sequences looks a lot like a language and shares some similarities to human languages. That aside, the articles also suggest that junk DNA may actually be very important to the survivability of species. So it looks like there is support for my claim that "junk DNA" is in fact a very clever design (more than I suspected). It's looking more like your argument that the design is "messy" is simply your subjective belief, which may not in fact be supported by the science in question.

You say that the junk DNA was manipulated by an intelligent agent of some kind to enhance its survivability. That its purpose was (to paraphrase Aristotle) its "final cause". I say that its survivability is the very mechanism that allowed it to outlast competing designs. There was no purpose. Some self-replicators are just better than others, and those are the ones that last longer. What a surprise.

Author Topic: Can ID make testable predictions? (Read 5262 times)