How do you detect "design"?

[leroy]

QR codes are designed. The prior knowledge is present. If it doesn't open a site, then it's still a QR code. Just a non-working one.





Show me an example where it successfully detected design without prior knowledge of design.

1 QRs could be caused by a random mechanism or by a designer.

2 If you send me a QR I wouldn’t know a priori if it is designed or not

3 If you apply the test that I suggest (if the QR opens a website) …we would know that the QR is SC and therefore designed.


Please explain which of these 3 points do you reject.

Please start your reply with “I affirm that point “X” is wrong because….

 

[Pogo]

1 QRs could be caused by a random mechanism or by a designer.

2 If you send me a QR I wouldn’t know a priori if it is designed or not

3 If you apply the test that I suggest (if the QR opens a website) …we would know that the QR is SC and therefore designed.


Please explain which of these 3 points do you reject.

Please start your reply with “I affirm that point “X” is wrong because….

 

[YoursTrue]

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​

amazing. The world is falling apart in many senses but people keep arguing about complexity. Truly amazing but not unanticipated by some.

 

[osgart]

You are basically confusing "function" with "purpose"

A function can be anything life makes use of. A suited function is one that is unmistakably placed for the goals of a life form.

We have evidence of function. We don't have evidence of purpose.
Do you have evidence of purpose? If so, I'ld love to hear it. And if you actually do, I'll gladly accept it.
My money is on you not having any though, because it would be bizar if such evidence actually exists while it not being common knowledge.
Nevertheless, I'm more then willing to listen to what you may think to have.

Why would a human life form with a self aware intellect have such a tool as the human hand that can expertly manipulate objects in the environment?

The "no evidence" part.

Well, to be accurate.... It's not that there is something that leads me "away" from it. It's more correct to say that there is simply nothing that leads me "towards" it.

Sounds like a personal intuition. Mine is opposite that.

 

[osgart]

Why not?

Qualities of being have no physical referent. Though people from a third person perspective associate qualities with brain processes; they are merely filling in gaps with presuppositions.

 

[YoursTrue]

In the sciences there are requirements that reduce the need of interpretation.

You mean requirements like seeing Taktaalik and scientifically figuring fish developed legs and crawled out of water to live on land?

 

[YoursTrue]

No it doesn't. I don't see an ideally designed nature. You assumed I did all on your own. I'm not going to argue extremes with anyone.

Naturalism assumes the mundane causes function. Under naturalism we can't expect any thriving function at all. It doesn't get off the ground.

I'm atheist, but I cannot simply dismiss intelligence and purpose because of experts who assume the mundane causes every function. They dismiss it out of hand.

I can understand your viewpoints, although I believe in God. I am no longer an atheist.
However, the discussion about evolution as portrayed by scientists doesn't really link up with the evidence although many will say so, since there is really nothing to show much about the "in-betweens," for example, fossils that show how fish developed legs and lungs to crawl and live out of water. My discussion here has mainly been to see how a "believer" might believe that no God was necessary (in other words, that evolution from abiogenesis is true). And those who do not believe in God as a Creator will tell me basically the same thing as those who claim to believe in God and evolution.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You mean requirements like seeing Taktaalik and scientifically figuring fish developed legs and crawled out of water to live on land?

You are not being serious.

Try again.

Don't you value the Ninth Commandment at all?

 

[firedragon]

I feel like the question is sort of missing the point of understanding the gods to have had a hand in the making of things, at least from my own perspective. Then again, arguments about origins frequently miss that point just in general so I suppose that is par for the course.

For me "detecting design" is an awkward way of putting the experience of awe at the splendor of reality. What one believes is "behind" that splendor - if anything - varies from person to person and culture to culture. Some see reality and its aspects to be divine in of itself, some see purely physicalist processes, some see idea made manifest, some see a reality shaped by an external divinity, and on and on. There is wisdom to be gleaned from all of these versions of the stories and their tellings. What I have noticed is that regardless of what ideological box some human calls themselves, the experience of awe at the splendor of reality seems fairly universal. That some call this divinity and some don't shouldn't be what matters, IMHO. Unfortunately, the existence of this subforum demonstrates otherwise.

Detecting design? Well, it's not an emotional or preachy matter. It's a rational and probabilistic or if you may, statistical inference.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Qualities of being have no physical referent. Though people from a third person perspective associate qualities with brain processes; they are merely filling in gaps with presuppositions.

You are just repeating your claim instead of supporting / explaining it.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

A function can be anything life makes use of. A suited function is one that is unmistakably placed for the goals of a life form.

I have no idea what you mean by that or how you concluded such.

Why would a human life form with a self aware intellect have such a tool as the human hand that can expertly manipulate objects in the environment?

Because it is useful for its survival.

Sounds like a personal intuition. Mine is opposite that.

No. It's just not believing things on no evidence.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

1 QRs could be caused by a random mechanism or by a designer.

Show me a QR code that wasn't designed.

It's a trick question btw. If it wasn't designed, it wouldn't be a QR code

2 If you send me a QR I wouldn’t know a priori if it is designed or not

You would. QR codes are factually designed. You don't find them under a rock. They are the product of a human or an algoritm made by a human.
That's what they are.

3 If you apply the test that I suggest (if the QR opens a website) …we would know that the QR is SC and therefore designed.

We don't need your silly test. We know QR codes are designed because we literally invented them. We know what QR codes are. Regardless if they open websites or not.

Please explain which of these 3 points do you reject.

Please start your reply with “I affirm that point “X” is wrong because….

There is nothing to explain. It's just sillyness to the highest degree.
We know what QR codes are.

The very fact that you call it a QR Code means it is a QR code. And QR Codes are made. By humans / algoritms.
Both functioning as well as faulty ones.



PS: I note also that you didn't answer my request of giving me a single example of successfully applying your SC nonsense to detect design in something where it was unknown if design was present. IOW, where it wasn't just some post hoc rationalization (where it even barely works eventhough design was already detected). Very telling.

 

[osgart]

Because it is useful for its survival.

People take it for granted that nature turns out anything useful at all to a living creature.

If you can't understand what I mean by suited function I really don't know what else to say. It's different than an arbitrary function. Life isn't arbitrary functional.

Life solves problems for life by putting parts in their right places in order to do work in the environment. You don't get from that state which doesn't work to a state that is workable without intelligence. I don't just arbitrarily know how to walk. There's no series of fortunate incidents that arbitrarily allows for me to walk as I see fit in the environment.

 

[osgart]

I can understand your viewpoints, although I believe in God. I am no longer an atheist.
However, the discussion about evolution as portrayed by scientists doesn't really link up with the evidence although many will say so, since there is really nothing to show much about the "in-betweens," for example, fossils that show how fish developed legs and lungs to crawl and live out of water. My discussion here has mainly been to see how a "believer" might believe that no God was necessary (in other words, that evolution from abiogenesis is true). And those who do not believe in God as a Creator will tell me basically the same thing as those who claim to believe in God and evolution.

The reason I'm atheist is that God by definition is an ideal designer and one who governs life. What I see is wasteful, inadequate trial and error with some degree of autonomous programming, and preplanning in nature.

There must be a viable natural pathway for life to take root in the natural world so abiogenesis doesn't bother me.

I have to take evolution second hand, as I've never seen direct evidence for it first hand. It's an interesting narrative. It would explain survival of species, not necessarily arrival of species. I don't see it as a complete understanding of nature. I know people feel it shouldn't be questioned, and too me nothing is beyond questioning. At one time I just accepted what biologists say is true.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

People take it for granted that nature turns out anything useful at all to a living creature.

Because by now, we know it is granted. Demonstrably so. It's literally what the process of evolution does.

If you can't understand what I mean by suited function I really don't know what else to say. It's different than an arbitrary function. Life isn't arbitrary functional.

Still not sure what you mean by that. Maybe it's a language issue?
What is the practical difference between "arbitrary function" and just "functional"?

Life solves problems for life by putting parts in their right places in order to do work in the environment.

Not exactly.
It's more like life solving problems by keeping the parts where they happen to be in a useful place in context of environmental pressures.

It's not like these parts evolve with predetermined thought or intention.
Mutation, by any practical account, is random with respect to fitness.

What happens to work is kept (because it tends to survive and reproduce) and what doesn't is discarded (because it tends to not survive and reproduce or not as much).

You don't get from that state which doesn't work to a state that is workable without intelligence.

At no point is there a state that "doesn't work" because that state goes extinct.
That's one.

Second, evolution doesn't require any intelligence to optimize already working stuff into stuff that works even better in context of the ever changing environment.
This is exactly what evolution does.......

I don't just arbitrarily know how to walk. There's no series of fortunate incidents that arbitrarily allows for me to walk as I see fit in the environment.

Your ability to walk is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution molding bones and muscles and everything else into what it does today.
And at no point in your entire lineage's history was there ever the "goal" of having you alive today as a walking bipedal creature.

Your post sounds as if you don't really understand how evolution works on living reproducing systems and it seems as if you are engaging in some type of teleological fallacy also.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I know people feel it shouldn't be questioned

EVERYTHING should be questioned, ALWAYS.

It is at the very heart of scientific inquiry to question currently held ideas. Every time a hypothesis is tested, it is implicitely questioned.
Every genome sequenced, every fossil found,... is a test of evolution and thus an implicit questioning thereof.

The thing is though that evolution stands tall against all these tests and questions. It accounts for all the facts and isn't contradicted by any.
That gives it tremendous explanatory power. It is not an over exaggeration to say that evolution is among the most solidly, if not the most solid, supported theories in all of science.

You might have heard about how the "holy grail" in physics to find this theory of "everything", also sometimes called the "unified field theory of physics". Right now physics is divided into islands that don't really agree with eachother: quantum physics and classical physics.

The fields of biology (anatomy, genetics, molecular biology, etc) DO have their "unified field theory". That is what Evolution theory is. It explains it all in one solid explanatory model.

, and too me nothing is beyond questioning

As it should be.

At one time I just accepted what biologists say is true.

And now you think you know better?

 

[Pogo]

People take it for granted that nature turns out anything useful at all to a living creature.

If you can't understand what I mean by suited function I really don't know what else to say. It's different than an arbitrary function. Life isn't arbitrary functional.

Life solves problems for life by putting parts in their right places in order to do work in the environment. You don't get from that state which doesn't work to a state that is workable without intelligence. I don't just arbitrarily know how to walk. There's no series of fortunate incidents that arbitrarily allows for me to walk as I see fit in the environment.

Here is a free copy of a slightly out of date book that is still a very good introduction to understanding the intelligence behind how our hands came to be ours.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin

 

[leroy]

Show me a QR code that wasn't designed.

It's a trick question btw. If it wasn't designed, it wouldn't be a QR code



You would. QR codes are factually designed. You don't find them under a rock. They are the product of a human or an algoritm made by a human.
That's what they are.



We don't need your silly test. We know QR codes are designed because we literally invented them. We know what QR codes are. Regardless if they open websites or not.


There is nothing to explain. It's just sillyness to the highest degree.
We know what QR codes are.

The very fact that you call it a QR Code means it is a QR code. And QR Codes are made. By humans / algoritms.
Both functioning as well as faulty ones.



PS: I note also that you didn't answer my request of giving me a single example of successfully applying your SC nonsense to detect design in something where it was unknown if design was present. IOW, where it wasn't just some post hoc rationalization (where it even barely works eventhough design was already detected). Very telling.

,,,
You are playing silly semantics.... ok QRs are designed , but the information in the QR could be ether designed or not designed


1 A QR could be the result of You (or even a monkey) typing random letters and numbers.

2 in this case the information of the QR wouldn't be designed, but rather random noise

PS: I note also that you didn't answer my request of giving me a single example of successfully applying your SC nonsense to detect design in something where it was unknown if design was present

I incist in my previous example


1 We don't know if the information of a particular QR was caused by a designer or by a random mechanism

2 apply the test (see if it opens a website)

3 if it opens website then it would be SC and therefore probably designed

 

[leroy]

View attachment 91582
View attachment 91583

So if any of those QR opens a website or download a document or opens an image etc .... It would be designed


I challenge you to explicitly deny that this is an objective and viable test

 

[ImmortalFlame]

So if any of those QR opens a website or download a document or opens an image etc .... It would be designed

How could you possibly know that? As you said earlier, a monkey hitting random buttons could potentially produce a QR code, and that QR code could still technically work if it was similar enough to a pre-existing one. So, how could you possibly determine whether or not that QR code was the result of conscious design or a monkey randomly hitting buttons, even if the QR code worked?