Chesil Beach is not high in algorithmic specified complexity

Tom English, in his recent post on this blog, has argued that:

Distinguishable entities operating identically by simple rules can form structures high in specified complexity

This is, of course, an example of a long standing critique of specified complexity. However, the critique is nonsense. The critique fundamentally misunderstands specified complexity.

Specified complexity makes no claims as to the probability of the outcomes or entities under consideration. It assumes that you have some other way of assesing that probibility under that given hypothesis. The only role of specified complexity is to justify rejecting a hypothesis if it renders the observed outcome overly improbable.

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