Not if the material can produce things that look like writing in a natural way. Certain types of flow structures can be mistaken as meaningful. For that matter, people find faces in clouds all the time. Those are NOT meaningful.
Of course not, neither is the letter I, but 'Eat at Joes' written in the clouds tells us with a great deal of confidence that a sky writer did it
because the improbability of each combinatorial sequence character compounds the rest- until the odds of one chapter of Shakespeare being written by a blind chimp is less than one in all the elementary particles in the universe. The universal constants are a tad more unlikely still
On the contrary, we know of many situations where complexity increases because of non-linear dynamics. 'Specified information' is a non-starter until you describe what you mean by 'specified'.
^ yes crucial point, a pile of bricks is more 'complex' in structure than a neat brick wall. But the wall better displays ID because it has more specified information as opposed to unspecified or 'Shannon' information. 'specified' is just a convenient word, but the principle is that this information I write now, specifies an emergent/separate function or purpose- in this case ultimately convincing you I am totally right!
And this gets to the deeper meaning of specified information, which cannot exist without the capacity for anticipation, that in turn cannot exist without creative intelligence- that's putting a deeper issue very briefly
No, it is NOT heavily biased in favor of a natural explanation. Here is a better analogy. We find a piece of bone on the ground and want to know whether natural processes split it apart or an intelligent agent did so. How do we determine this? Well, we know both intelligent agents and natural agents can produce split bones, so we go to the next level. What possible natural processes could produce that particular type of split in a bone? What sorts of intelligent agency could do it? Are there significant differences in the results of the two types of process? If not, then no conclusion can be drawn, although if an intelligent agent in the vicinity is known, that increases the likelihood of such a bit.
That's a perfectly good analogy but it removes the specific issue of information we are discussing, if the bone has a hole for a necklace and 'Dave loves Jenny' etched in it, that changes the odds dramatically
In the case of cosmic agency, we are still figuring out what natural processes can be expected to produce. We have no intelligent agency *ever* detected at that scale. The *simplest* way to proceed is to figure out more fully what natural processes can do and see if they are enough to explain the observations. As long as they are, or are even remotely close, that is the preferred choice *because* no intelligent agents off of Earth have ever been found.
again, that would preclude SETI from concluding ID in mathematical sequences, by the exact same rationale I conclude it in universal mathematics.
But I agree entirely with the logic, what can intelligence do v. what can nature do, hierarchical digital information systems have only one
proven source out of these two.
Now, if we manage to travel to another star system and land on a planet with 'ordinary' geology, but still find structures that cannot be produced by said geology, *then* we have an argument for intelligent agents.
agreed also, this logic works on earth, it works in cosmic radio waves, it works on other planets, I just don't see the basis to suddenly pivot, and forbid the same logic applying to the origins of the universe and life
How do I go about ruling out God? Easy: we resort to supernatural explanations, well, never. Because supernatural explanations are not actual explanations: they are not testable, they are not predictive, and they are nothing other than 'just so' stories.
So we can do the same for anything
#1 define supernatural as 'not an explanation'
#2 label the theory 'supernatural'
#3 hence said theory is not an explanation
That is precisely the circular reasoning Hoyle used to dismiss the BB
You argued yourself that you consider intelligence a
natural phenomena, -- not a supernatural one
so why allow other natural phenomena to compete on the cosmogony playing field, but prohibit this one? Other than the fact it would win far too easily?
I have no need to do the reverse, I can grant you the existence of your waves on the beach, your multiverse, any unguided mechanism you like, ID still has the greater power of explanation
Wrong, and wrong. We do NOT know it is astronomically low until we have an inkling of mechanism. A naive calculation of the probability of a protein folding correctly gives wildly wrong answers. it does so because it doesn't take into account the mechanisms, specifically how amino acids interact with water. T
rying to do a calculation without knowing details is pointless, at best.
As for the multiverse theory, it was NOT proposed to get around astronomically low probabilities. Multiverse theories are a direct consequence of attempting to unit quantum mechanics and general relativity into a consistent theory. This was a *major* challenge for decades. But *every* way we have found to do so leads to some sort of multiverse.
That is NOT conclusive, but it is interesting on the theoretical level.
again you could argue both points with Hawking, he explicitly credits the multiverse with power to create our otherwise improbable universe 'eventually' because it has infinite attempts.
Of course the multiverse comes equipped with one restriction, making sure that
one thing must
never be created: anything that could be described as God, since that would ruin the entire point. Yet apparently this flying spaghetti multiverse has already created intelligent beings, bent on reverse engineering their own universe, with no inherent barriers (according to Andre Linde) to creating their own one day....
oops!
I must run for now but I appreciate the civil debate