My problem with the IDists’ 500 coins question (if you saw 500 coins lying heads up, would you reject the hypothesis that they were fair coins, and had been fairly tossed?) is not that there is anything wrong with concluding that they were not. Indeed, faced with just 50 coins lying heads up, I’d reject that hypothesis with a great deal of confidence.
It’s the inference from that answer of mine is that if, as a “Darwinist” I am prepared to accept that a pattern can be indicative of something other than “chance” (exemplified by a fairly tossed fair coin) then I must logically also sign on to the idea that an Intelligent Agent (as the alternative to “Chance”) must inferrable from such a pattern.
This, I suggest, is profoundly fallacious.
First of all, it assumes that “Chance” is the “null hypothesis” here. It isn’t. Sure, the null hypothesis (fair coins, fairly tossed) is rejected, and, sure, the hypothesized process (fair coins, fairly tossed) is a stochastic process – in other words, the result of any one toss is unknowable before hand (by definition, otherwise it wouldn’t be “fair”), and both the outcome sequence of 500 tosses and the proportion of heads in the outcome sequence is also unknown. What we do know, however, because of the properties of the fair-coin-fairly-tossed process, is the probability distribution, not only of the proportions of heads that the outcome sequence will have, but also of the distribution of runs-of-heads (or tails, but to keep things simple, I’ll stick with heads).
And in fact, I simulated a series of 100,000 such runs (I didn’t go up to the canonical 2^500 runs, for obvious reasons), using MatLab, and here is the outcome:
As you can see from the top plot, the distribution is a beautiful bell curve, and in none of the 100,000 runs do I get anything near even as low as 40% Heads or higher than 60% Heads.
Moreover, I also plotted the average length of runs-of-heads – the average is just over 2.5, and the maximum is less than 10, and the frequency distribution is a lovely descending curve (lower plot).
If therefore, I were to be shown a sequence of 500 Heads and Tails, in which the proportion of Heads was:
- less than, say 40%, OR
- greater than, say 60%, OR
- the average length runs-of-heads was a lot more than 2.5, OR
- the distribution of the proportions was not a nice bell curve, OR
- the distribution of the lengths of runs-of-heads was not a nice descending Poisson like the one in lower plot,
I would also reject the null hypothesis that the process that generated the sequence was “fair coins, fairly tossed”. For example:
This was another simulation. As you can see, the bell curve is pretty well identical to the first, and the proportions of heads are just as we’d expect from fair coins, fairly tossed – but can we conclude it was the result of “fair coins, fairly tossed”? Well, no. Because look at the lower plot – the mean length of runs of heads is 2.5, as before, but the distribution is very odd. There are no runs of heads longer than 5, and all lengths are of pretty well equal frequency. Here is one of these runs, where 1 stands for Heads and 0 stands for tails:
1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
Would you detect, on looking at it, that it was not the result of “fair coins fairly tossed”? I’d say at first glance, it all looks pretty reasonable. Nor does it conform to any fancy number, like pi in binary. I defy anyone to find a pattern in that run. The reason I so defy you is that it was actually generated by a random process. I had no idea what the sequence was going to be before it was generated, and I’d generated another 99,999 of them before the loop finished. It is the result of a stochastic process, just as the first set were, but this time, the process was different. For this series, instead of randomly choosing the next outcome from an equiprobable “Heads” or “Tails” I randomly selected the length the next run of each toss-type from the values 1 to 5, with an equal probability of each length. So I might get 3 Heads, 2 Tails, 5 Heads, 1 Tail, etc. This means that I got far more runs of 5 Heads than I did the first time, but far fewer (infinitely fewer in fact!) runs of 6 Heads! So ironically, the lack of very long runs of Heads is the very clue that tells you that this series is not the result of the process “fair coins, fairly coins”.
But it IS a “chance” process, in the sense that no intelligent agent is doing the selecting, although in intelligent agent is designing the process itself – but then that is also true of the coin toss.
Now, how about this one?
Prizes for spotting the stochastic process that generated the series!
The serious point here is that by rejecting a the null of a specific stochastic process (fair coins, fairly tossed) we are a) NOT rejecting “chance” (because there are a vast number of possible stochastic processes). “Chance” is not the null; “fair coins, fairly tossed” is.
However, the second fallacy in the “500 coins” story, is that not only are we not rejecting “chance” when we reject “fair coins, fairly tossed”) but nor are we rejecting the only alternative to “Intelligently designed”. We are simply rejecting one specific stochastic process. Many natural processes are stochastic, and the outcomes of some have bell-curve probability distributions, and of others poisson distributions, but still others, neither. For example many natural stochastic processes are homeostatic – the more extreme some parameter becomes, the more likely is the next state to be closer to the mean.
The third fallacy is that there is something magical about “500 bits”. There isn’t. Sure if a p value for data under some null is less than 2^-500 we can reject that null, but if physicists are happy with 5 sigma, so am I, and 5 sigma is only about 2^-23 IIRC (it’s too small for my computer to calculate).
And fourthly, the 500 bits is a phantom anyway. Seth Lloyd computed it as the information capacity of the observable universe, which isn’t the same as the number of possible times you can toss a coin, and in any case, why limit what can happen to the “observable universe”? Do IDers really think that we just happen to be at the dead centre of all that exists? Are they covert geocentrists?
Lastly, I repeat: chance is not a cause. Sure we can use the word informally as in “it was just one of those chance things….” or even “we retained the null, and so can attribute the observed apparent effects to chance…” but only informally, and in those circumstances, “chance” is a stand-in for “things we could not know and did not plan”. If we actually want to falsify some null hypothesis, we need to be far more specific – if we are proposing some stochastic process, we need to put specific parameters on that process, and even then, chance is not the bit that is doing the causing – chance is the part we don’t know, just as I didn’t know when I ran my MatLab script what the outcome of any run would be. The part I DID know was the probability distribution – because I specified the process. When a coin is tossed, it does not fall Heads because of “chance”, but because the toss in question was one that led, by a process of Newtonian mechanics, to the outcome “Heads”. What was “chance” about it is that the tosser didn’t know which, of all possible toss-types, she’d picked. So the selection process was blind, just as mine is in all the above examples.
In other words it was non-intentional. That doesn’t mean it was not designed by an intelligent agent, but nor does it mean that it was.
And if I now choose one of those “chance” coin-toss sequences my script generated, and copy-paste it below, then it isn’t a “chance” sequence any more, is it? Not unless Microsoft has messed up (Heads=”true”, Tails=”false”):
true false true false false false false true true false true true false true true true false true false true true true true true false true false false false true true true true true true true true true false false false true true false true true false false false true false false true true false false false true false true false true true true true true true false false true false true true true true true true false true true true false true false false false false false false false false false false false false false false true false false true false true true true false true true true false true true false false true true true true true false true false true false false true true false true true true true true true true false false true false false true false false true true false true true true true false false true false false false false true false false true true false false true false true true false true false true true true true true true true true true true true true true false true false false true false false false true false false true true true false false true true true false true true true false false false true false true false false true false true false true true false true false true false true false false true true true false true true false false false false true false false true false true true true true true false true true true false false false true false true false true true true false false false false false false false true true false true false true false true true false false false true false true true false true false true true true true false true false false false false true false true true true true false false true false true true true true false true true false false true false true false true true true true true false false false true true true false false false true true true false true false true true true true true true true false false true false true false false true true true false true false true true false false true true true false true true false false false true false false false false true false false true true true true false false true false false true true true true false true false false true false true true false false true true false false true true false true false true true false false false false false false false true false true true false false false true true true false false false true false true false false false true true false true false true true true true false true false false false true false true true true false false false false true false true true false true true true false true true false true false false true false true false true true false false true false true false true false false true true false false
I specified it. But you can’t tell that by looking. You have to ask me.
ETA: if you double click on the images you get a clear version.
ETA2: Here’s another one – any guesses as to the process (again entirely stochastic)? Would you reject the null of “fair coins, fairly tossed”?
Here’s a sample run:
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
Barry? Sal? William?
ETA3: And here’s another version:
The top plot is the distribution of proportions of Heads.
The second plot is the distribution of runs of Heads
The bottom two plots represent two runs; blue bars represent Heads.
What is the algorithm? Again, it’s completely stochastic.
And one final one:
which I think is pretty awesome! Check out that bimodality!
Homochirality here we come!!!
OK, you don’t understand the argument and are just blindly regurgitating what you read with no idea if it’s correct.
Being not well-educated in a particular field can also make the ignorant one falsely think he has found a logic flaw when actually it’s just his own ignorance speaking.
William J. Murray,
So I say again, how do you determine that the argument presented (in, for example, the paper I linked) is possible but implausible?
You have hardly had time to read it in the time between my posting it and your responding. If the onus is upon the ‘Darwinist’ to present a ‘plausibility’ argument, you could at least give it a goddamned hearing! Put some effort in.
WJM knows implausibility when he see it just like WJM knows design when he sees it. No science or evidence necessary, it’s his special gift.
I didn’t bother to look at your paper because you gave me no reason to. I don’t run check links thrown into a debate as if they might have something in it related to the debate, then spend my time reading god knows how much material trying to figure out how that person thinks the paper services the argument I’m making.
The onus is on you to link, quote from the link and make your case accordingly. If you think that paper addresses, or has in it information that addresses, my argument or something I’ve actually claimed, make your case. Quote me. Quote it. Make your case.
Otherwise, you’re bluffing.
You have yet to show me where I claimed something was possible but not plausible. What I have claimed is that showing that something is possible is not the same as showing it is plausible – not that I have “determined” it to actually be implausible.
Please quote to me something significant from the paper you linked to that makes a case distinguishing between the possibility that it occurred as described, and the scientific plausibility that it occurred as described.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html
…and so on and so forth…
William J. Murray,
To summarise, the paper indicates from sequence phylogeny of flagellar core proteins that the flagellum arose from, initially, a single gene deep in the ancestry of bacteria that has been repeatedly duplicated and modified to give rise to the modern ensemble. Its current order of assembly recapitulates its evolutionary phylogeny, further supporting a process of incremental accretion of parts.
It backs up my earlier, previously unsupported statement that an ATPase rotating a short protein could provide primitive locomotion, enhanced by subsequent amendments into a differentiated structure. Unusually, but rather satisfyingly, the flagellar proteins coalesce quite neatly upon the same tree, with little incursion from the rest of the bacterial genome.
The justification of this conclusion is lengthy, hence I linked the entire paper for your perusal. Is there something you find implausible about this scenario?
Another of WJM’s amazing psychic skills – he can tell what’s in a scientific paper before he reads it. This is after WJM specifically asked for information to supposedly enlighten his ignorance.
This skill isn’t that special though. WJM shares it with Behe and most of the other ID pushers with science-paper-phobia.
It’s a six or seven page paper that directly addresses your implausibility claim. Lizzie’s rules here are to assume that participants are acting in good faith. That means one can expect that one’s interlocutors are genuinely interested in the truth of their claims and do not need to be spoon fed information.
Wow. Will you be rolling out “where you there?” next, mindpowers?
Robin,
Thanks! At least you’ve found some references that actually use the word “plausibility”! Perhaps that was all you were shooting for?
1) In the first link, can you tell me how the paper establishes the criteria for a finding of “plausibility”, as opposed to merely “possible”, in any scientific sense? Or is it just “plausible” in the author’s personal opinion?
2. As per the second link, do you think that a “general argument” based on “analogy” is a valid means of establishing the scientific plausibility of an specific biological assertion?
Here WJM, another article on the topic that you will refuse to read. This one’s only a page so you won’t lose much time not reading it.
Evolution myths: The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex
WJM’s demand to be spoon fed reminds me a bit of uber-YEC “AFDave” Hawkins. Once during a discussion of how dendrochronology is used in C14 calibration he was shown high resolution photos of the specific tree rings being discussed. That wasn’t good enough for AFD, no sir. He demanded actual samples be delivered to his house so he could personally examine them.
I read Matzke’s pile of matter of fact wholesale changes in successive steps of a secretion system in a bacteria. Its basically just another version of Dawkins-cum Nilsson & Pelger’s eye evolution “computer model” (which was never even a computer model, but hey, they did IMAGINE a computer model, so almost).
It basically says, this secretion system turned into this one, then got better. Skip a few steps, skip a few more steps, then do it all again:
Example:
“Numerous improvements follow the origin of the crudely functioning flagellum. Notably, many of the different axial proteins (rod, hook, linkers, filament, caps) originate by duplication and subfunctionalization of pilins or the primitive flagellar axial structure. These proteins end up forming the axial protein family. ”
See, see, you just take a few proteins, duplicate them, then turn them into some caps, some rods, throw a little nitrous injection here, a few filaments there, bingo. Who can argue with this logic anyway.
Just take an engine that’s already completed, and start listing some of the parts, like say a housing gets co-opted to be an oil filter, a hole gets filled up with a sticky protein that becomes a crude piston, a few improvements along the way, and you add a small port for a spark plug. Other bacteria already have ports for other functions, so imaging a little opening for a spark plug housing is not such a stretch, and on and on we go with our after the fact reconstruction.
Does Matzke ever give a mathematical number of mutations necessary? Of course not. Does he give a time frame of how long it takes (I mean why not, just copy Nilsson and Pilsner and make up a number, since its a fairy tale anyway, ) Nope. Are any of his duplications and subfunctionalizations deleterious, of course not, why make it hard.
And if you have convergent evolution of similar structures that took entirely different pathways, all the better, randomess fairytales can abound-just look at placental and marsupial wolves, makes perfect sense!
And you know what the best part is. We have trillions and trillions of bacteria sitting in petri dishes that we are watching everyday, and we never have to worry about them contradicting this story, because they never do anything! That is a relief! Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence! Non-linear, chaos math theory in reverse!
One has to wonder why it is that IDists (and Willie-boy) very rarely bother to get up to speed with the literature before parping off about things which are usually PRATTs
The whole idea of IC in complex biological structures has been pretty comprehensively refuted. Science has moved on; creationism and its cheap-tuxedo-clad fellows cannot
Oh well, at least a few antievolutionists admit they don’t have the knowledge or expertise to carry a scientific argument – not that it stops them trying
WJM you’ve been provided with several scientific references on the evolution of bacteria flagellum.
Please give us the equal courtesy of providing a few scientific references showing how your Intelligent Designer brought the flagella into existence. Don’t forget the evidence that your creation event is plausible and not just possible.
William J. Murray,
You have stated that showing that something is possible is not the same as showing that it is plausible. Which, while true, is at least suggestive that you consider the case on plausibility to remain unmade. So just so I’m straight on the matter, do you consider the evolution of the bacterial flagellum by stepwise duplication and modification of existing genes to be scientifically plausible, and not merely ‘possible’? I’m not asking for your opinion as an expert, obviously. No more am I. But if you harbour doubts, I’d be interested to know what they are.
I have no reason to consider a bare link to be of any merit whatsoever or to even be remotely related to anything I have said unless there are pertinent quotes offered and some kind of case is made for its relevance.
It’s not my job to parse links and try to reconstruct how someone else thinks it is relevant. That’s their responsibility. I’m not doing their job for them.
But “chance” is not a single answer! There are many ways in which “chance” (if by “chance” you mean “non-intentional”, or even simply non-deterministic) processes could lead to the patterns IDists claim are the signature of design. That’s the point. It’s the point of my OP – to show how many non-deterministic blind processes can produce outcomes which would be rejected as the outcome of “fair coin, fairly tossed” but are nonetheless non-determined and blind!
My OP simply falsifies the whole “500 heads” thing as some kind of shibboleth for ID.
How many details of the flagella “Intelligent Creation” can you provide?
Did you read the Liu and Ochman paper that Allan Miller provided on the stepwise formation of the bacterial flagellar system? How do you explain their phylogenetic data?
You guys are great at throwing rocks from the sidelines but never ever ever produce any support of your own position.
You can lead a Creationist to the data but you can’t make him think.
phoodoo,
I sympathise with your irritation. Nonetheless, flagellar proteins show substantial sequence homology, and a phylogenetic sequence that mirrors the sequence of construction of the modern full complex. There is also strong evidence of common ancestry with the Type lll Secretory System. All of this contradicts Behe’s fundamental ‘IC’ claim, which is based purely upon the interaction of the parts of the modern system, a fact that can be readily explained by coevolution. What are we to do with such evidence? Bury it in a deep hole?
Ok, you falsified the ID claim. But doing it admitted that “chance” or non deterministic process are what drives evolution. Chance as a cause.
With respect, William, you are attempting to have your cake and eat it here. Your claim was that an IC structure cannot have a “plausible” Darwinian pathway, and you cited the bacterial flagellum. That link is to a paper that directly refutes your claim. If you want to understand how, you will have to read it. It is simply self-contradictory to say that you can reject a claim because you can see its logical flaws, yet simultaneously claim that you don’t have the expertise to evaluate the claim – and, then to pile Pelion on Ossa, refuse to read the refutation!
IC is simply not an adequate criterion for rejecting non-design. IC structures are perfectly accessible via Darwinian pathways, via co-option, and even via non-Darwinian steps, via drift.
We can show this with the unforgiving logic of a computer program, and Lenski did.
William J. Murray,
Cool. I have summarised the paper and explained the relevance. Do you have any response to that?
Well, I don’t think “chance” is anything like specific enough to be a “cause”. You might as well cite “shit happens” as a cause.
The question is “which particular shit?”
But yes, of course, evolution in practice driven by non-deterministic processes, not least because at least some mutations are probably the result of quantum level events (although it also works perfectly well in deterministic simulations). But again, that tells us very little.
I’d say what drives evolution is a chaotic system with “attractor basins” representing locally optimal configurations for reproductive success.
And if that sounds too confusing, I suggest you read something on non-linear systems, because that is what evolution is.
I think that’s a huge part of the problem. Most ID-Creationists have no clue what a feedback system even is, let alone how one works.
If you follow the site rules to assume other participants are acting in good faith, you have a reason to consider that Allan posted a pertinent link.
Since you nonetheless insist on quotations, here’s the abstract from the link that Allan posted:
This paper directly addresses the plausibility of the flagellum being the product of known evolutionary mechanisms. If you are interested in that topic, you should read it.
Phoodoo, this post absolutely does not address the issue. The principle of IC was supposed to be that if a feature could not function without any one of its parts, there can have been no advantageous precursor stage that Darwinian processes would have “selected”.
This principle is logically refuted by the possibility that precursor stages could have conferred a reproductive benefit different from that conferred by the IC structure itself. The Pallen and Matzke paper pointed out a number of precursor features that would have done so, thus showing that this is not only true in principle, but is also plausible in practice.
It is extremely unlikely that the Pallen and Matzke paper is an actual reconstruction of the actual evolutionary history of the flagellum, but just as you can refute the claim that a mountain is unclimbable by showing a route by which it could be climbed, even it if were not the route actually taken by the person who claimed to climb it, so you can refute the claim that a feature is unevolvable by advantageous precursor steps by showing that advantageous precursor steps are possible.
And that is before we even consider the absolute refutation of the principle given by Lenski et al in their AVIDA paper, which showed that IC is simply no bar to evolution, even when many neutral, and even severely disadvantageous steps, are required to attain reach an IC feature.
And really, if you don’t understand chaos theory and non-linear systems (which isn’t difficult math) read James Gleick’s book, which is written for a non-specialist readership. It is absolutely relevant to this whole subject, and if only ID proponents would take the time to familiarise themselves with it, a lot of this argy bargy would be over, and maybe they could concentrate on doing some actual research.
ID is potentially an interesting project. I wish someone would have a go at it.
Exactly. Dembski and Ewart do, but they seem to be rather sidelined these days.
And they sideline it.
In addition, the authors concluded with discussing lines of further investigation to test their conclusions and possibly identify specific evolutionary pathways.
Has any paper by any intelligent design creationist ever suggested specific tests of their claims?
Why in the world would you think that displaying similar phylogenetic sequences with secretory systems was anymore evidence for Darwinian evolution than it would be for an intelligently designed system?
Furthermore, the very existence of convergent evolution systems is exactly contradictory to a randomly mutated tree line of evolution, but the discovered evidences for such convergences throughout the animal kingdom has forced evolutions to just come up with ex post facto rationalizations for these discoveries which they had not only not predicted, but rather had proclaimed, ala Gould et al, would be unlikely to ever happen.
But that doesn’t happen in any of the examples Lizzie posted. I would describe them like this:
1: flips of a fair coin
2: rolls of a fair 5-sided die
3: rolls of a weighted 10-sided die
4 through 6: These are essentially time series where the next data point depends stochastically on the previous several data points. There’s nothing wrong with that; if you record at fixed intervals the position of a particle moving due to Brownian motion, its next position can depend on its previous few positions. You wouldn’t describe Brownian motion as a deterministic process, would you? Edit: Let’s assume that the only information we have is the position of a single particle bouncing around due to Brownian motion, and we don’t know anything about the properties of the surrounding medium.
If you disagree, point out exactly where Lizzie “butchered” the meanings of words in one or more the examples she actually posted.
Sounds EXACTLY like one would expect from a teleological formation of a novel feature in multiple organisms, almost as if they all were able to strive towards an optimum flagellum for each organisms particular niche.
Sounds nothing like one would expect from random, fortuitous forward progression down totally different paths trajectories, all ending with the same result.
I think you misunderstood my reply that you quote. I used the phrase intelligently designed without scare quotes and uncapitalised. When I do that, I am using the words in their generally understood sense and not in the sense that they have been co opted in the “argument from Intelligent Design” I use real and imaginary to avoid creating semantic confusion with natural and artificial. So crop circles are real, overwhelmingly the result of human endeavour, artificial, if you like, made by people who may or may not be described as intelligent.
No. Examples of imaginary beings would be fairies, goblins, unicorns, bug-eyed space aliens and so forth. I don’t think they exist so the possibility of them being able to do things like generate anything doesn’t arise.
Well, no. A goblin is an imaginary creature; not possible to build a goblin without being able to step outside the laws of the universe. We might hypothesize about some multicellular organism that might have evolved given the right opportunity and the right niche.
Regarding guano, attacking ideas is fine. It is insulting commenters that is discouraged.
I’d just like to be clear on what you mean when you say “intelligent designer”. I would distinguish between real agents, where the causal effect is observable, and imaginary agents, where no causal effect is offered.
Well, unfortunately you are not succeeding. A “result of intelligent design” is pretty meaningless as a statement.
I agree with what Lizzie said about hypothetical artefacts. For me the interesting point is between real natural phenomena and real artificial phenomena and how much we could actually say about the constructor of some apparently alien artificial object. I think this (and crop circles) is a complete red herring regarding “the argument from Intelligent Design”.
I’m happy to agree for the sake of argument. Remember what I said about normal usage, capitalisation and scare quotes.
I’m seriously sceptical! The examples so far proposed suggest not.
If I could give you a good answer I would be an ID proponent! 🙂 Do you have a meaningful answer? You need to flesh out what you mean when you talk of a “commodity”. Would it be observable?
It isn’t. Nobody claims it is. Anything at all could be evidence for an intelligently designed system, as long as we allow that the designer had some weird ideas.
You are completely missing the point. Behe claimed that the bacterial flagellum was unevolvable, because it was “Irreducibly Complex” i.e. wouldn’t work minus any one part, and so you’d need the stupendous coincidence of all parts just happening to appear together before it would confer any advantage.
But he forgot, apparently, that the parts could perfectly well confer some other benefit, even if not the benefit of the flagellum, when not all were present. And the Pallen and Matzke paper showed actual examples of homologous features of the flagellum, but without its other parts, but which perform a beneficial function for their bearers.
So Behe’s argument simply falls apart.
It may still be the case that the flagellum was designed. But the point is that we cannot conclude that it must have been. We cannot, in other words, reject the null hypothesis that it was not designed.
Furthermore, the very existence of convergent evolution systems is exactly contradictory to a randomly mutated tree line of evolution, but the discovered evidences for such convergences throughout the animal kingdom has forced evolutions to just come up with ex post facto rationalizations for these discoveries which they had notonly not predicted, but rather had proclaimed, ala Gould et al, would be unlikely to ever happen.
Because there are a huge number of ways the sequences could line up if an Intelligent Designer had done things but only one way – a branching tree structure – if common descent is true. The data shows the branching tree structure. That’s positive evidence for common descent.
Wrong. Convergence is both expected and predicted with natural selection involved. There are only a finite number of solutions to the physics problems animals face so it’s not surprising that different lineages sometimes discover the same ones. Sharks and dolphins both evolved stream-lining because that shape moves most efficiently through water. Cetaceans and some bats evolved the same mutation in echolocation because that particular gene is an excellent receptor of high frequency sounds.
Ewert Lizzie! That Scottish bias is showing!
I haven’t seen any case made establishing the scientific plausibility of the Darwinian construction of the bacterial flagellum.
I consider the “evolution” of such structures to be trivial. I accept that it is possible for Darwinian processes to create a bacterial flagelllum. What I find problematic and unsupported (as far as I know) in any rigorous way is the claim that Darwinian (not the same as “evolutionary”) processes can plausibly account for the evolution (change over time) of such significant functional structures. I don’t know enough about the science of molecules to make an assessment on whether or not it is scientifically implausible, but it **seems**, IMO, to be implausible. I’m open to information that would change that perspective.
Apparently not since you’ve steadfastly refused to read any of the scientific evidence that’s been offered to you.
Please post from that paper where it defines the metric used to scientifically evaluate the probability of the mutations, co-options, refinements, etc. in relationship to at-the-tme environmental pressures and availabililty of genetic material individually, and then taken as a whole to the modern flagellum, so that a meaningful distinction can be made between “possible” and “plausible”.
Because one researcher personally finds a particular, speculative pathway (that cannot be demonstrated as viable in the real world, but only assumed to be viable in the distant past) “plausible” is not the same thing as scientifically establishing the plausibility of such a pathway. I’m not asking for some scientists “opinion” that it is plausible – we have plenty of scientists here that will offer up that view; I’m asking for a substantive metric that scientifically demonstrates it as more than a mere possibility – which all that is necessary for some to find it “plausible”.
GUANO
First off Lizzie, its is complete nonsense to argue that I don’t understand non linear systems and chaos theory. It is you that created this phrasing, when it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the principles of chaos referenced in Darwinian evolutionary theory. Its as if you think because both have something to do with science, they must be related. Chaos theory is a math problem, chaos in evolution is a logic problem. Two absolutely different meanings. You are playing humpty dumpty again, just like you do with the word fair, whilst blaming Barry for his multiple uses of the word chance.
Secondly, you are misstating (surprise surprise) what the problem of IC is. Of course part of the issue is that you have a complex system, which relies on multiple parts all working in cohesion with each other. It may well be possible to remove one or two parts without destroying the whole system, Behe NEVER refutes this. What he says, at it is so obviously true, is that the more parts you remove, the less likely it is that the system can function properly. Furthermore, you have to not just show how a few parts could theoretically hold some other use, like Millers silly mousetrap tie clip analogy, you have to make a reasonable estimation of how ALL the parts could have come from some other function.
Its just like I explained with reconstructing the use configuration of a car engine. Just being simplistic and saying, well, we can scrap together this old housing which we don’t need anymore, and make it into an oil filter, even if it fits badly, we can improve it later. And if we take this old plug, and turn it into a piston, all we need in some other cylinder walls to mutate over this way a bit, and although not ideal, could make a crude compression chamber. Like William said, taking all these old parts from other systems, and figuring out a way to gerry rig them into a new system, just because you can create a fairytale which surmises this, will end up with an extremely poorly engineered hunk of junk that would never start. Its like saying, lets take a watermelon, and a bicycle pump and a feather pillow, plus a broken mr potato head and an extension cord, and make a perfectly performing air conditioner. Don’t worry, some further mutations will improve its functioning over time.
And conveniently for you, virtually every system we see today works flawlessly, so its always something in the past, as if evolution has stopped, and only good systems exist now.
To me will be enough if you admit that when you said this:
“So can we please jettison this canard that “Darwinists” propose chance either as as an explanation for the complexity of life”
You were wrong and BA right.
There is no end to the possibilities one can come up with to explain something, once it is already done. Its exactly what Dawkins tries to do with eye evolution.
Well, we know we are going to need a hole, so let’s start with a small hole and just let it get bigger and bigger with each generation. Let’s try to ignore the reality that we don’t see random holes popping up all over the place in random organisms. And we need a lens, so any old liquid film can make a lens. Where do we see random heritable mutations of liquid films in various parts of an organisms body sprouting today? We don’t, but we are reconstructing, so just keep watching the movie, and don’t ask questions.
We are going to need a few rods and cones, so any crude little sensors for color should do for now. Do we ever get random mutations for little color sensors popping up on the bottom of our feet on occasion (which we should expect if the random pop up, then see if its useful theory is true)? Well, someone got lucky once.
And on and on it goes.
What, you mean like the human spine? Or knees? You’d described those as working perfectly would you?
William J. Murray:
Yet you don’t apply the same to ID, yet believe it anyway. Telling.
This passage indicates that you don’t understand chaos theory, phoodoo. Lizzie did mean the chaos theory in application to evolution. The term attractor would clue in anyone familiar with chaos theory. “Chaos as a logic problem” is something you have just made up.
If they understand everything, and can show there are problems with our current understanding of evolution, they why the hell are they here when they could be earning money/recognition/praise for simply writing down their revelations and publishing?
Kinda makes you wonder. Even if phoodoo/William convinces everybody here of their argument then so what? Nothing will change.
Get this stuff out to a wider audience phoodoo/William, check this out:
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions
They are waiting!
You mean you believe the human spine functions sort of like an old box of parts, which were borrowed from a beak from a bird, then a fish scale and also a few fingernail parts which slowly migrated backwards on then up?
You don’t find it amazing that they line up perfectly for balance, and that each has the exact shape to allow them to stack up, whilst surrounding a series of cables more finely attuned than a bunch of fiber optic lines, that also allow you to sit, stand, do a somersault, and climb a tree, and play basketball?
Let’s just refresh everyone’s memory of how the ID hero Dembski behaves in a situation similar to the one Willie has put himself in here:
So, Willie, when we provide the pathetic level of detail you insist upon, when we connect the dots between flagellar precursors and the first active flagellum – with some calculated amount of “plausibility” – then what? Then you’re still going to insist that you have the right to continue to believe in ID without your providing one single detail in support of it? Well, of course you have the right but it will make you look like an idiot. Just as it made Dembski look like an idiot. And I don’t mean “IDiot”, I mean idiot.