Commenter ‘fifthmonarchyman’ from UD has joined us and has some thoughts on active information.
I’ll cross-post his comment from the Ewert thread below.
148 thoughts on “Active information thread for fifthmonarchyman and others”
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It’s interesting you should mention ice in Florida. Just minutes ago I digitized some pictures of my kids from 1984. They were playing in an ice storm. In Florida. Five years later we had six inches of snow.
Is an ID explanation needed?
petrushka says,
You seem to be saying that retrospective astonishment is evidence for ID.
I say,
Not at all,
I’m merely saying that specifications/targets can not explained by algorithmic processes.
On the other hand If we eliminate algorithmic processes we are left with only two choices to explain the iceberg.
random chance or non-computable processes.
I hope we agree that random chance is not a satisfying explanation for the iceberg.
Therefore if non-computability is the hallmark/definition of design the implication is obvious.
peace
petrushka says
Is an ID explanation needed?
I say,
How would you satisfyingly explain this particular storm at that particular place and time?
please be specific
peace
fifth,
Don’t let it be said that we didn’t bend over backwards to give you a platform.
Probably the easiest approach is for you to post it as a comment here in this thread (don’t forget to supply a title). Then Alan or Neil or Lizzie can turn it into an OP for you.
Cool. Your ideas are worth a post of their own FMM!
Why would I want to?
Seriously, 5th, complexity theory says dynamic systems diverge rapidly. They are not predictble. And retrospective explanations do not enable prediction.
Evolution is a drunkard’s walk. On can observe that esch step is consistent with the laws of physics, but not predict its direction.
No problem. I can change permissions accordingly. Have pm-ed FMM
Getting terminology agreed is extremely important – I’d say it is vital to prevent discussion getting bogged down. So much of the sound and fury of IDist versus non-IDist discussion, to my mind, arises from people meaning different things by different terms.
So yes, please let’s get some terminology sorted out: I’m very happy for you to define your terms however you want. The terms don’t matter as long as we know what you mean by them, and vice versa.
And yes, it would be great to have an OP from you. You might not gain an “inch of ground” but that won’t be because you won’t get a hearing! And, you never know, you might.
ETA: and “the equivalence of Integrated information and Irreducible complexity” isn’t “simple” at all. Even Behe had changed his definition of IC several times.
fifthmonarchyman,
If I remember correctly, at UD you said you had some sort of tool (spreadsheet based perhaps?) that could determine if a given set of data was designed or not. Perhaps I’m mangling your actual claim via memory! Does that sounds familiar?
But if that sounds familiar, perhaps that would be something that can be talked about as it has a clear claim (it detects design or not) and can be tested easily (did it detect design for a given data set). Perhaps we could start with that as that alone sounds interesting?
fifthmonarchyman,
Dembski, Ewert, and Marks (DEM) allow the “search” process to be algorithmic. All they require, as Ewert explains informally in his ENV post, is that the outcome of the process be randomly distributed on the finite “search” space
Let 
denote the probability distribution of the outcome. There is also a baseline distribution 
the details of which we can ignore. The “target” 
can be any event — subset of 
— for which 
DEM stipulate further, for convenience, that 
It’s natural to say that an outcome distributed according to
is biased, relative to 
in favor of event 
The ratio 
measures the bias in an obvious sense. Logarithmic transformation of the bias, i.e.,
does not turn it into something other than bias. The notation
for the “active information” measure of bias indicates explicitly that 
is part of the measure. Ewert’s reference to the “target” as a “yardstick” at ENV is appropriate.
Ewert acknowledges that a “search” does not search, that the “search” is unrelated to the “target,” and that “active information” is not information. (So why continue to use misleading terminology?) Those observations originated with me, not them. There’s nothing of the sort in DEM, the most recent paper on active information.
I don’t care for your references to “our side.” I have never played sides, and was in fact affiliated with the Evolutionary Informatics Lab for a time, protesting Baylor’s action. You’re contradicting DEM, whom I have worked hard to understand. Some critics, including me, initially got Dembski and Marks wrong, but that was due to their poor presentation. I have never, ever intentionally misrepresented them. And they evidently have learned from me in the past year.
I’m committed to civil discussion, in precise terms, of the present state of ID theory under development at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. I’ve illustrated what I mean by precise. There are at least four people around, beside myself, who can deal with it. Winston most definitely can. I imagine he’s yearning to educate the UD crowd. But it seems that there’s actually more interest here than there.
Quoting myself, Tom English:
DiEb also said as much for years, but didn’t spell things out as I did. I may well have missed similar remarks by keiths.
Excellent! you have author permissions now, so if you go to Dashboard (top right of screen) then Posts, you should have “Add post” as an option. There is quite a nice wysiwyg editor, so just if you compose your post in, say Word, it should format automatically. Sometimes I edit in a “read more…” line later to keep the front page of the blog legible, or you can do it yourself. You can save a draft and come back later, and you can preview it as you edit. When you are ready, click “publish”. You can edit after publishing if you see an error, or want to add something, but try to make your edits clear.
You will find, if you poke around, that you have the ability to edit comments in your thread! Please do not do so. We are trying to remove this facility so only mods can edit (and there are only a few of us, and we only redact porn/malware and personal info, and occasionally fix faulty formatting tags). The only other editing we do is to move posts (not delete them). Anyway, the point is that is only done by mods here, so please ignore those buttons from thread authors! That might sound odd, but it’s part of the philosophy of this site that people can post what they want (within the rules), and that anyone can ask to have Author permissions i.e. post an OP, but that nothing should be deleted (apart from that narrow band of exceptions) or altered “from on high”.
I can’t resist pointing out that one piece of objective assymmetry between here and UD is that anyone can post an OP here, and no comments are deleted. And you have to break one of the three clear cardinal rules to be banned (porn/spam/posting other people’s personal info). So the idea that we are an echo chamber is not based in any rule that this site operates.
If UD regulars came over here, they would be given Author permissions on request, and could easily outnumber us. We do, in any case, have several ID supporters here.
keiths said,
Don’t let it be said that we didn’t bend over backwards to give you a platform.
I say,
I think you misunderstand my intentions. I’m not looking for a platform I just like to knock a few ideas around. I have no desire and have no illusions that I will change anyone’s mind.
According to my world view such a thing is not even possible with out divine intervention.
I’m really only interested in firming up my ideas in this area a little bit and thought possibly the folks who frequent here might be of some assistance in that regard.
I’m very hesitant because I don’t want to replay the same old record that Ive heard so many times before when folks from my side try to communicate with folks from your side.
peace
PS I’ll think about that OP today
fifthmonarchyman,
Most of the people dear to me are evangelical Christian. I’m thoroughly irreligious, which means, in part, that anti-religion is not my surrogate religion. If you think folks at this site are preoccupied with atheism, then you really need to get around more. There are many views here, and people don’t hesitate to disagree with one another. You shouldn’t buy into Barry Arrington’s simplistic us-them distinction. And you shouldn’t buy into what I say. Read the threads, and see what you see.
If you check out the interaction between keiths and me, reviewing the latest article by Ewert, Dembski, and Marks, you’ll see plenty of overt disagreement. I just had email come in notifying me that Mark Frank has commented on DiEb’s post regarding one of the questions he posed to Winston. Have a look, and then tell me that you’re getting undue scrutiny.
OMagain says,
If I remember correctly, at UD you said you had some sort of tool (spreadsheet based perhaps?) that could determine if a given set of data was designed or not.
I say,
Actually it’s a tool to see if a particular numeric string is the product of a random, algorithmic or non-algorithmic cause. It does not determine anything. The observer does the determining.
I use it in my work. to evaluate the strength of forecasting models.
It’s been my experience that I infer design when the cause is determined to be non-algorithmic. That intuition has served me pretty well so far.
peace
petrushka says,
Why would I want to?
I say,
I don’t know perhaps because you are interested in an actual explanation for the event instead of just being able to say you are not be compelled to attribute it to design.
peace
Tom English says,
Ewert acknowledges that a “search” does not search, that the “search” is unrelated to the “target,” and that “active information” is not information. (So why continue to use misleading terminology?)
I say,
Perhaps because we are all feeling our way around something that has not been thought about systematically before and is hard to express in unambiguous terms.
If I understand you correctly you were able to wade through the terminology and take a crack at understanding the paper. That is really all that can be be expected with communication
you say,
Dembski, Ewert, and Marks (DEM) allow the “search” process to be algorithmic. All they require, as Ewert explains informally in his ENV post, is that the outcome of the process be randomly distributed on the finite “search” space Omega.
I say,
I not saying that the search can’t be algorithmic only that if it is the target can not be justifiably said to result from it.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said ‘What a good boy am I
Jack is apparently mistaken, the thumb thrust does not explain the plumb treat.
peace
Sounds interesting. Care to write an OP on that at some point on how that works and give some examples?
petrushka says,
complexity theory says dynamic systems diverge rapidly. They are not predictble. And retrospective explanations do not enable prediction.
Evolution is a drunkard’s walk. On can observe that esch step is consistent with the laws of physics, but not predict its direction.
I say,
I completely agree, The problem arises when evolution is called on to explain any particular outcome (target).
It’s like asking how did the drunk end up in the gutter and being told he walked there.
That could very well be true but it is vacuous as an explanation.
peace
For what it’s worth, I am not “anti-religion”. I think it can be a good thing, and for half a century I believed in a god.
I am “anti-bad science” though.
It can’t. Or only, at best, a small set of steps.
But the same is true of lots of science – gravity doesn’t explain why this rock landed precisely here in this pile at the bottom of this cliff. But it does broadly account for the fact that it isn’t at the top.
Presumably you also agree that “design” as a mechanism for ID is also vacuous?
You have yet to provide an operational definition of integrated information. Are you now claiming the it merely means a non-computable number? If not, how does one determine that
contains integrated information.
(Please note that analogies are explanations, not arguments)
{damn, can’t get the latex to work!)
Perhaps we need to discuss what is meant by the word explanation.
We do not live in a universe in which forensics can calculate complex histories in pathetic detail.
But we do live in a world in which forensics is used on a daily basis to convict people of crimes. Oddly enough, the standard is beyond reasonable doubt, not simply the best explanation.
To the best of my recollection, there are no crimes where the lack of evidence leads to the conclusion that things were done by invisible or immaterial agents.
Posting on a tablet: continued…
When we say a feature is explained by evolution, what we mean is that it appears to be consistent with descent by gradual modification from an ancestor common to other organisms.
Since we don’t attribute crimes to ghosts (not anymore), why would we do so in biology, when we have an observed mechanism that is sufficient?
Tom English:
My version of that has been to point out that the Law of Conservation of Information isn’t a law, isn’t about conservation, and isn’t about information. 🙂
fifth,
I think your instincts were right. I remarked earlier:
I look forward to your OP.
OMagain asks,
Presumably you also agree that “design” as a mechanism for ID is also vacuous?
I say,
It certainty would be vacuous to offer design as an explanation for intelligent design. I’ve never heard anyone offer such an explanation.
What I have heard is design offered as explanation for various specific things things like the Cambrian explosion or the Bacterial flagellum. Such an explanation is not be vacuous.
Unlike algorithmic process a designer does target specific things that is a necessary component of the designing process,
peace
Elisabeth says
the same is true of lots of science – gravity doesn’t explain why this rock landed precisely here in this pile at the bottom of this cliff. But it does broadly account for the fact that it isn’t at the top.
I say,
I think you get it. Gravity like any algorithmic process does not indeed can not explain anything specific. It can only offer a general picture of probabilities.
But it’s the specific things that interest us. We want to know why the rock this particular is at the bottom of the cliff and not at the top with all the others.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Gravity is deterministic, I think?
petrushka says,
When we say a feature is explained by evolution, what we mean is that it appears to be consistent with descent by gradual modification from an ancestor common to other organisms.
I say,
The rock on the bottom of the cliff is consistent with gravity (big surprise) but gravity does not in explain it. It would be vacuous to say it did.
I say,
Since we don’t attribute crimes to ghosts (not anymore), why would we do so in biology, when we have an observed mechanism that is sufficient?
I say,
Evolution is not a sufficient mechanism to explain anything specific that is the point. Like gravity it can only offer generalized probabilities.
peace
petrushka says,
To the best of my recollection, there are no crimes where the lack of evidence leads to the conclusion that things were done by invisible or immaterial agents.
I say,
Is this the kind of response I can expect from you? Have I offered invisible immaterial agents as an explanation for anything?
peace
Well, we might. Or we might not.
But we don’t say: because I don’t know how THIS particular rock is at the bottom of the cliff, I must infer something other than gravity.
So neither can we infer something other than evolutionary processes was responsible for THIS frog or THIS tree or THIS hominid.
Which is, at least some of the time, what IDists seem to be saying. And that that something must be a Designer.
It’s difficult to say. You don’t jump in with this objection when gpuccio offers invisible and undetectable intelligent agents. I haven’t seen you object to anyone in the ID movement who offers up invisible undetectable agents. So I jump to the conclusion that you have no objection when Barry or someone posits immaterial minds.
I do hope you will get around to something more interesting than evolution is insufficient.
EL said,
because I don’t know how THIS particular rock is at the bottom of the cliff, I must infer something other than gravity.
I say,
It’s not that the lack of evidence leads us to infer anything.
We know that gravity is insufficient to explain the position of the rock. If were are interested in what caused this target we must look beyond gravity it’s that simple.
you say,
So neither can we infer something other than evolutionary processes was responsible for THIS frog or THIS tree or THIS hominid.
I say,
Again it’s not about inference it’s about having an explanation for a particular target. If you want one for a target you need to look beyond evolution.
you say,
Which is, at least some of the time, what IDists seem to be saying. And that that something must be a Designer.
I say,
The question of if design offers the best explanation for what we see is entirely separate from the question of whether evolution offers any explanation what so ever for any particular target.
hint It does not
peace
OK, in that case, fifth, I’m simply not getting your point. I look forward to your OP!
Here’s a hint. No one is interested in an explanation for a particular target. No one except creationists.
ETA:
I’m not trying to be dismissive of glib. It’s simply true that no now thinks the outcome or direction of evolution is predictable (which seems to be associated with your concept of explanation).
In fact, I would say that if you pinned down a biologist, he or she would say that design is not really possible, because the outcomes of changes are impossible to predict.
I have asked a number of times for a design advocate to offer a proof of concept. Demonstrate that design is possible.
fifthmonarchyman,
Is your point asking what explains the fitness surface ?
petrushka says,
I haven’t seen you object to anyone in the ID movement who offers up invisible undetectable agents.
I say,
First of all I have never heard anyone offer up invisible undetectable agents as an explanation for anything.
Second of all I have no attachment to the “ID movement” what ever that is supposed to be. Is it some sort of invisible undetectable agent?
As I said before I hope we can discuss stuff without getting bogged down in the same old culture war rut that these sorts of discussions always seem to get into.
you say,
I do hope you will get around to something more interesting than evolution is insufficient.
I say,
Me too, It would help if getting a simple acknowledgement of that fact was not like pulling teeth. It’s almost like you guys are afraid to give even an inch.
peace .
I am not preventing you from posting. I would not have continued down this path, except that you said it was interesting.
I think it should be useful for you to know something about the landscape you intend to navigate. I’m pretty sure any argument regarding the difficulty of reaching a specific target will be greeted by a big yawn.
So you can anticipate that and work your counter into your argument.
petrushka says
No one is interested in an explanation for a particular target. No one except creationists.,
I say,
Here is a partial list of particular targets off the top of my head it’s by no means comprehensive
1) the Cambrian explosion
2) Mammals
3) the four chambered heart
4) the origin of eukaryotes
5) Cytoskeletal structures
6) flowering plants
7) Consciousness
8) The immune system
9) the bacterial flagellum
10) Ichthyosauria
I can’t imagine why you would not be interested in explanations for things like that.
Just to be clear I’m not saying that these things must be the result of design I’m only saying that “evolution” is insufficient to explain them.
peace
I think you need to address the question of why anyone would consider these targets.
You can paint a bulls eye after the arrow lands, but that doesn’t make it a target.
I would ask you to expand on that claim. Are you saying:
a) that the theory of evolution at its current state of development is unable to explain those phenomena but this does not rule out the possibility that it may be able to at some point on the future
or
b) that theory is unable to explain them at all, even in principle, and will thus never be able to?
I would also ask how fine a resolution do you require of an adequate explanation? Would you accept confirmation of the mechanisms or processes necessary for evolution to occur at all at the macroscopic scale or do you require a step-by-step account of the history of living things down to the molecular level or smaller?
SeverskyP35 asks,
I would ask you to expand on that claim.
I say,
Have you read the paper?
peace
I bake a lemon-meringue pie (*). It is delicious, but I am fairly sure that physics cannot give a detailed step-by-step explanation of what happened.
Therefore … what? Have we refuted physics?
* (You can tell I wrote this just before dinner …)
petrushka asks.
I think you need to address the question of why anyone would consider these targets.
I say,
If they are not targets what are they?
you say,
You can paint a bulls eye after the arrow lands, but that doesn’t make it a target.
I say,
Either these things are targets their existence is attributable to random chance.
is that your claim? Really?
like I said it’s like pulling teeth
peace
All, I’m going to probably let this one go for a while Ive got some stuff to do and I need to work on the OP.
joe said,
Therefore … what? Have we refuted physics?
I say,
No and that was never the intent we just have proven that “physics” does not fully explain the pie.
Do you think this is a zero sum game? where the fundi must be defeated at all costs?
peace
fmm
I’ve followed this thread and your response elsewhere and I am left wondering what you might know on the topics related to your list of ‘targets’.
for example i am left wondering what you might know about lungfish versus teleost physiology and anatomy? It is a key aspect of the evolution and transition to terrestrial species. I would hope that you are aware of the key differences between these organisms and how they relate to the organization of a lung, pulmonary circulation, development of a four chambered heart.
Bk says,
I’ve followed this thread and your response elsewhere and I am left wondering what you might know on the topics related to your list of ‘targets’.
I say,
I don’t claim expertise in anything. and knowledge of the sort you are referring to is completely irrelevant to the point.
Which is the inability of algorithmic processes to explain particular “targets”. I’m not sure how you missed this obvious detail if you were following this thread.
peace