How do you detect "design"?

[TagliatelliMonster]

Mathematical beauty?

Is this a question or a suggestion?
If a question, I'll just answer "no".

If a suggestion, I'll ask you to make your case.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Hard to believe, given that your method is too wide and allows for pretty much all possibities,

It does not.

Life has the property of specified complexity……………..SE would be the evidence for manipulation/manufacture

I disagree. I say it's a teleological fallacy, but go ahead and make your case.
Why do you think that is a sign of manipulation / manufacturing?

Explain the concept and then show us how such are exclusive to design with intention/planning.

WHY is life SE

because there are many in which the building blocks of life can exist, that are allowed by the laws of nature…………. But only few combinations would produce a self replicating molecule, the laws of nature don’t favor this pattern

How have you determined this? Sounds like yet another claim.

The evidence we actually have is that life was present on this planet pretty much as soon as the state of the planet was able to sustain it. So the evidence suggests that life is relatively easy to form given a suitable environment.

why SE indicates design

experience, every time we find something with this property it is always designed.

Interesting.
Explain what this property is. How can it be recognized.

No who is ready for a long and evasive reply?

Answer directly…………… why isn’t SE a sign of manufacture?

You're first going to have to explain in detail what "SE" is.

 

[leroy]

Explain the concept and then show us how such are exclusive to design with intention/planning.

Please read everything and make an honest effort to understand before you answer

That has been done multiple times-

Specified complexity is anything that has these 3 characteristics

1 Complex, it has many parts, many possible combinations or ways ot arrange it, according to the laws of nature

2 independent pattern: it has a pattern that can or could be known independently

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency towards that pattern

If the system or object doesn’t have all 3 then it is not SC

For example this text or as car is SC because

1 they are complex: there are many possible combinations of letters allowed by my keyboard. A car has many parts

2 they have an independent pattern: the words form meangfull words and sentences in English, the parts of the car have a function

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency toward this patterns: there is nothing in the laws of nature that would favor some letters over other letters, the laws of nature don´t organice the parts of a car such that they become functional .

Is the concept of SE clear? Is not, what part is unclear?

how such are exclusive to design with intention/planning.

I´ll go for the easy answer, experience: every time SC is observed, and the cause is known, the cause is always design.

--


So if you are still disagreeing, please answer why isn’t SC evidence for manipulation/manufacture?...............

 

[Copernicus]

Please read everything and make an honest effort to understand before you answer

That has been done multiple times-

Specified complexity is anything that has these 3 characteristics

1 Complex, it has many parts, many possible combinations or ways ot arrange it, according to the laws of nature

2 independent pattern: it has a pattern that can or could be known independently

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency towards that pattern

If the system or object doesn’t have all 3 then it is not SC

For example this text or as car is SC because

1 they are complex: there are many possible combinations of letters allowed by my keyboard. A car has many parts

2 they have an independent pattern: the words form meangfull words and sentences in English, the parts of the car have a function

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency toward this patterns: there is nothing in the laws of nature that would favor some letters over other letters, the laws of nature don´t organice the parts of a car such that they become functional .

Is the concept of SE clear? Is not, what part is unclear?


I´ll go for the easy answer, experience: every time SC is observed, and the cause is known, the cause is always design.

--


So if you are still disagreeing, please answer why isn’t SC evidence for manipulation/manufacture?...............

The criticism of Dembski's concept of "Specified Complexity" is that it lacks formal definition. Consequently, no peer-reviewed article in information science uses it in any way to distinguish intelligent design from other types of design. Usually, when creationists attempt to define it, they fall back on the usual argument from incredulity--that no such pattern of complexity is probable in nature. However, it turns out that we lack the knowledge to assign such probabilities, rendering any formal definition that relies on them meaningless. For example, you cannot assign the probability that something as complex as an eye can occur in nature, because you lack the information to make such a calculation. Hence, Dembski's Intelligent Design argument is usually treated as pseudoscience--a lot of technical jargon that ultimately comes to nothing.

 

[leroy]

The criticism of Dembski's concept of "Specified Complexity" is that it lacks formal definition.

That is not a big of a deal; most things don’t have a formal definition anyway……. If you understand what people mean by SC that should be enough……………if you don’t understand you can just ask.

Consequently, no peer-reviewed article in information science uses it in any way to distinguish intelligent design from other types of design. Usually, when creationists attempt to define it, they fall back on the usual argument from incredulity--that no such pattern of complexity is probable in nature. However, it turns out that we lack the knowledge to assign such probabilities, rendering any formal definition that relies on them meaningless. For example, you cannot assign the probability that something as complex as an eye can occur in nature, because you lack the information to make such a calculation. Hence, Dembski's Intelligent Design argument is usually treated as pseudoscience--a lot of technical jargon that ultimately comes to nothing.

if you don’t have the exact probability you can estimate it,

for example we cannot calculate the exact probability of typing random letters in a key board and creating a mean full sentence…………… but we can say that the probability is very very very low (even if we don’t have the exact number)

Take for example the theory of evolution and common ancestry, we can’t calculate the exact probability of chimps and humans sharing the same ERVs by chance…. but we know that the probability is very low……hence we look for a better explanation, which would be common ancestry. The exact probability is not needed in order to take common ancestry as the best explanation

My point is that if you get too picky with exact probabilities, (and definitions) and you make big issue out of them…………. You should also have issues with common ancestry and pretty much everything else in science

 

[Pogo]

Please read everything and make an honest effort to understand before you answer

That has been done multiple times-

Specified complexity is anything that has these 3 characteristics

1 Complex, it has many parts, many possible combinations or ways ot arrange it, according to the laws of nature

2 independent pattern: it has a pattern that can or could be known independently

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency towards that pattern

If the system or object doesn’t have all 3 then it is not SC

For example this text or as car is SC because

1 they are complex: there are many possible combinations of letters allowed by my keyboard. A car has many parts

2 they have an independent pattern: the words form meangfull words and sentences in English, the parts of the car have a function

3 the laws of nature don’t have a tendency toward this patterns: there is nothing in the laws of nature that would favor some letters over other letters, the laws of nature don´t organice the parts of a car such that they become functional .

Is the concept of SE clear? Is not, what part is unclear?


I´ll go for the easy answer, experience: every time SC is observed, and the cause is known, the cause is always design.

--


So if you are still disagreeing, please answer why isn’t SC evidence for manipulation/manufacture?...............

Specified Complexity as defined (lol) by the discoveroids is an incalculable post hoc rationalization. It has no value and has never even been used for anything.

You have a bunch of words, but you can't do anything with them.

Which one has CSI? the one that vaguely looks like a flower?
How about the other one? looks like noise on a b+w tv.
what if it was a frame from a digital VCR recording?
How can you know from either without knowing the generation process.
That you don't know eliminates Specified Complexity as a useful idea.

Sorry Charlie you are not taking over the world tonight

Has Natural Selection Been Refuted? The Arguments of William Dembski | National Center for Science Education

"Intelligent design" (ID) is the assertion that there is evidence that major features of life have been brought about, not by natural selection, but by the action of a designer. This involves negative arguments that natural selection could not possibly bring about those features.

ncse.ngo

 

[Pogo]

That is not a big of a deal; most things don’t have a formal definition anyway……. If you understand what people mean by SC that should be enough……………if you don’t understand you can just ask.



if you don’t have the exact probability you can estimate it,

for example we cannot calculate the exact probability of typing random letters in a key board and creating a mean full sentence…………… but we can say that the probability is very very very low (even if we don’t have the exact number)

Take for example the theory of evolution and common ancestry, we can’t calculate the exact probability of chimps and humans sharing the same ERVs by chance…. but we know that the probability is very low……hence we look for a better explanation, which would be common ancestry. The exact probability is not needed in order to take common ancestry as the best explanation

My point is that if you get too picky with exact probabilities, (and definitions) and you make big issue out of them…………. You should also have issues with common ancestry and pretty much everything else in science

This is science not philosophy, SC or CSI or design inference is all just woo.
Still not taking over the world.

 

[leroy]

Specified Complexity as defined (lol) by the discoveroids is an incalculable post hoc rationalization. It has no value and has never even been used for anything.

You have a bunch of words, but you can't do anything with them.

Which one has CSI? the one that vaguely looks like a flower?
How about the other one? looks like noise on a b+w tv.
what if it was a frame from a digital VCR recording?
How can you know from either without knowing the generation process.
That you don't know eliminates Specified Complexity as a useful idea.

Sorry Charlie you are not taking over the world tonight

Has Natural Selection Been Refuted? The Arguments of William Dembski | National Center for Science Education

"Intelligent design" (ID) is the assertion that there is evidence that major features of life have been brought about, not by natural selection, but by the action of a designer. This involves negative arguments that natural selection could not possibly bring about those features.

ncse.ngo

That you don't know eliminates Specified Complexity as a useful idea.

That I dotn know in this particular case, doesn’t invalidates the idea….. but if for example the QR opens a webpage…………the it would be SC and therefore designed

 

[leroy]

Specified Complexity as defined (lol) by the discoveroids is an incalculable post hoc rationalization. It has no value and has never even been used for anything.

You have a bunch of words, but you can't do anything with them.

Which one has CSI? the one that vaguely looks like a flower?
How about the other one? looks like noise on a b+w tv.
what if it was a frame from a digital VCR recording?
How can you know from either without knowing the generation process.
That you don't know eliminates Specified Complexity as a useful idea.

Sorry Charlie you are not taking over the world tonight

Has Natural Selection Been Refuted? The Arguments of William Dembski | National Center for Science Education

"Intelligent design" (ID) is the assertion that there is evidence that major features of life have been brought about, not by natural selection, but by the action of a designer. This involves negative arguments that natural selection could not possibly bring about those features.

ncse.ngo

In fact lets do the whole process , you´ll see that it is not so hard.

1 you haven’t provide enough evidence that say the QR-like image (form the right) was design

2 if you ask me what evidence I would accept

3 I would answer……….. well if the QR opens a file, or a webpage I would accept that as evidence for design.

See I gave you a clear and direct answer for what evidence would I accept in order to conclude design…… it wasn’t hard………why can´t you do the same?

 

[Copernicus]

That is not a big of a deal; most things don’t have a formal definition anyway……. If you understand what people mean by SC that should be enough……………if you don’t understand you can just ask.

I was only explaining why it is called "pseudoscience" rather than "science". You agree with my point that it has no formal definition, which renders it effectively meaningless as a scientific concept.

if you don’t have the exact probability you can estimate it,

for example we cannot calculate the exact probability of typing random letters in a key board and creating a mean full sentence…………… but we can say that the probability is very very very low (even if we don’t have the exact number)

Leroy, you need a better example of low probability when conversing with a linguist. I don't think you really understand what it means to produce a "meaningful sentence", so it is best not to go there. In any case, claiming that an event has low or zero probability of occurrence is not the same thing as estimating an exact probability. You need to have some information about how to calculate such a probability before you can produce a reasonable estimate.

Take for example the theory of evolution and common ancestry, we can’t calculate the exact probability of chimps and humans sharing the same ERVs by chance…. but we know that the probability is very low……hence we look for a better explanation, which would be common ancestry. The exact probability is not needed in order to take common ancestry as the best explanation

You are not an evolutionary biologist, so I can estimate with high probability that you only know what an endogenous retrovirus is and what role it might have in evolution because you read a lot of pseudoscientific attempts to justify the Intelligent Design side of the debate. Again, you lack information to calculate a probability, so you are really talking about a facile generalization, not an "exact estimate" of probability.

My point is that if you get too picky with exact probabilities, (and definitions) and you make big issue out of them…………. You should also have issues with common ancestry and pretty much everything else in science

Scientists do get picky about such matters. Biologists can be very picky about common ancestry. Pseudoscientists, not so much.

 

[Banach-Tarski Paradox]

So long as we’re on the topic of complexity, it seems that Scott Aaronson has taken up gambling.

His reasoning is interesting.

The odds that P=NP is 3% | Scott Aaronson and Lex Fridman​

 

[Pogo]

That I dotn know in this particular case, doesn’t invalidates the idea….. but if for example the QR opens a webpage…………the it would be SC and therefore designed

That is the problem, it is a post hoc fallacy which is all this design argument is.

 

[Pogo]

In fact lets do the whole process , you´ll see that it is not so hard.

1 you haven’t provide enough evidence that say the QR-like image (form the right) was design

2 if you ask me what evidence I would accept

3 I would answer……….. well if the QR opens a file, or a webpage I would accept that as evidence for design.

See I gave you a clear and direct answer for what evidence would I accept in order to conclude design…… it wasn’t hard………why can´t you do the same?

Not how it's done, you need to predict what sort of thing is random noise and how to differentiate it from "CSI" before you see the info,

 

[leroy]

I was only explaining why it is called "pseudoscience" rather than "science". You agree with my point that it has no formal definition, which renders it effectively meaningless as a scientific concept.

I disagree with your equivalence of “no formal definition = pseudoscience”……….. but ok whatever you say is granted for the sake of this conversations

In any case, claiming that an event has low or zero probability of occurrence is not the same thing as estimating an exact probability. You need to have some information about how to calculate such a probability before you can produce a reasonable estimate.

granted

You are not an evolutionary biologist, so I can estimate with high probability that you only know what an endogenous retrovirus is and what role it might have in evolution because you read a lot of pseudoscientific attempts to justify the Intelligent Design side of the debate.

Well I am granting ERVs as evidence for common ancestry………..so I have no idea on what pseudoscientific things are you talking about

Again, you lack information to calculate a probability, so you are really talking about a facile generalization, not an "exact estimate" of probability.

I think there is information to calculate probabilities and conclude low probability for say the origin of life

 

[McBell]

A topic that frequently comes up in these creation debates, be it in context of evolution or the origins of the universe or alike, is our supposed ability to be able to differentiate "design" from natural occurances.

Yet whenever creationist or "design proponents" bring this up, it seems to me that they are either very vague about it or their methodology of "detecting design" seems to be no more then fallacious argumentst from ignorance ("I don't know how it can be natural, so therefor it isn't"), arguments from incredulity ("I don't believe it's natural, therefor it isn't") or various species or combinations thereof.

I would say that in a nutshell, we detect design by demonstrating signs of manufacturing or use of artificial materials.
This implies that we have to understand manufacturing processes and what signs / traces they tend to leave.
It also implies that we have to understand the difference between naturally occuring materials and artificial materials.

This in turn means that we could not detect or conclude design when it concerns things of unknown manufactoring and natural processes or of unknown materials.

This also means that if a designer sets out to mimic natural processes and materials while doing a perfect job, we would not be able to tell the artificial object from the natural object.

For example, if someone would take a rough stone and smooth it out by perfectly mimicing water erosion as what would happen in say a river, we would not be able to tell that this was done by a person instead of by a river.


So, having said that, when somebody *Mod edit* then states that one can "detect design" in the universe based on for example of the values of the physical constants, I wonder what the methodology is that is being used.

So in this thread, I invite people who disagree with my methodology of detecting design to explain their methodology of doing so and demonstrate how it achieves better results.

I do not understand it, therefore it was designed by god.

Prove me wrong

 

[leroy]

Not how it's done, you need to predict what sort of thing is random noise and how to differentiate it from "CSI" before you see the info,

again if the QR opens a webpage it would be SC and therefore design...................what do you find so hard to understand?

 

[Pogo]

again if the QR opens a webpage it would be SC and therefore design...................what do you find so hard to understand?

because you really don't know if it was an Urdu spy message that just happened to link to a website.
You don't know how it was generated and so you really can't tell what it MEANS.
you could be totally in error with your assumption of QR and it might well have been B+W screen noise. Without further information, you cannot make a rational decision to attribution.
The answer in science is I don't know. not it looks like my idea of this.

 

[Copernicus]

I disagree with your equivalence of “no formal definition = pseudoscience”……….. but ok whatever you say is granted for the sake of this conversations

You agreed with me that Specified Complexity (SC) has no formal definition. If you want to use SC to distinguish intelligent design from other kinds of patterns we observe in nature, you need to prove that it does so reliably. Lacking a formal definition of the concept, you won't be able to prove it in a rigorous manner to scientists and other skeptics, but I'm pretty sure that those who want to believe in the proof, i.e. pseudoscientists, will be satisfied with less rigor.

In any case, claiming that an event has low or zero probability of occurrence is not the same thing as estimating an exact probability. You need to have some information about how to calculate such a probability before you can produce a reasonable estimate.

granted

Just to be sure what was granted, I will assume that the part you did not put in boldface was also granted. I wasn't referring to just any kind of information.

Well I am granting ERVs as evidence for common ancestry………..so I have no idea on what pseudoscientific things are you talking about

Forgive me for being such a curmudgeonly skeptic, but I don't think you are qualified to judge the accuracy of probabilistic calculations that show ERVs are evidence of common ancestry between chimps and humans. We actually have a lot of corroborating evidence to back up that assertion of common ancestry that doesn't involve ERVs, but there may some bona fide research that tries to make that claim with ERVs. I am not qualified to judge such research either, but I don't even know what source convinced you of that.

I think there is information to calculate probabilities and conclude low probability for say the origin of life

Again, that is your opinion, which I have to admit strikes me as having a low probability of being correct. I will refrain from giving you an exact estimate of the probability, since I don't have time to print out all of the calculations I did on the back of my napkin.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Take for example the theory of evolution and common ancestry, we can’t calculate the exact probability of chimps and humans sharing the same ERVs by chance

Actually, we sort of can.

There are about 3000 known virusses that can insert themselves and create ERV's.
There are about 3 billion possible insertion spots in the genome.

So 2 species sharing exact ERV's would come down to 3000*(3 billion)²


That is based on the knowledge of random insertion spots.
If tomorrow we find out that the viruses we share for some reason ALWAYS insert in the exact same spot due to some yet unknown mechanism, then that falls away and the chance of us sharing ERV's are closer to 1 in 1.

It comes down to knowledge.

…. but we know that the probability is very low……hence we look for a better explanation, which would be common ancestry.

This is not actually correct.
We already had the explanation of common ancestry. Discovery of ERV's meant we could make a prediction based on the model of common ancestry in terms of sharing ERV's. That prediction being that it should follow the same pattern as ancestral lineages and other DNA markers. And it does.

What we have here, is indeed a mechanism where the probability of sharing ERV's becomes closer to 1 in 1. This mechanism is not a mechanism that makes certain viruses always insert in the same spot. It's rather a mechanism of inheritance, where the ERV's that form in an ancestor is passed down to off spring.

The exact probability is not needed in order to take common ancestry as the best explanation

My point is that if you get too picky with exact probabilities, (and definitions) and you make big issue out of them…………. You should also have issues with common ancestry and pretty much everything else in science

No.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

again if the QR opens a webpage it would be SC and therefore design...................what do you find so hard to understand?

It's not because it opens a webpage.
It's because you know what QR codes are.


If the webpage it links to no longer exists, or if there is some type of error in the encoding of the QR which makes it not work... would you then decide the QR code wasn't designed?

Please.