CSI Comedy

A robot is presented with a collection of 2000 randomly configured fair coins. The robot orients them all to heads. How much CSI is evidenced by the 2000 coins after the robot is done with them? I said 2000 bits. Winston said 0 bits. Other IDists said something in between.

If IDists can’t agree on such a simple example, then why use the CSI convention to analyze designs? I have lobbied instead to use deviations from expectation as an indicator as to how credible it is to reject the chance hypothesis for an artifact.

Whether ID is true or not is a separate issue from the issue of metrics which IDists can agree on. KairosFocus lobbies heavily for his FSCO/I.

Why even calculate bit values for CSI? The primary issue with the Explanatory Filter is whether the chance hypothesis can be rejected. By chance, I mean a process that maximizes uncertainty. An uncertainty maximizing process can easily be rejected as an explanation for the 2000 coins being heads through basic probability.

What if we just found the 2000 coins long after the robot is gone and all the observer had to go on was the set of 2000 coins? Would the CSI number still be 0 bits as Winston asserted?

At this point it doesn’t matter so much who is right. The fact there is no agreement on what should be a trivial example does not inspire enthusiasm from me. At that point I said, it was becoming prohibitive to use CSI as a means of implementing the Explanatory Filter. It is too cumbersome, adds too many confusion factors.

My view:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/computer-science/the-paradox-in-calculating-csi-numbers-for-2000-coins/

here was a differing view by Winston Ewert and our exchange, plus some of my protests:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/computer-science/csi-confusion-remember-the-mechanism/

Mark Frank’s view:

Sal

This is not as irrelevant to Darwnism as you think. The answer will depend on:

a)what you define the target as e.g all heads or all the same or at least 1999 the same and so on.

b)what assumptions you are making about how the coins got that way – was one tossed and then some natural mechanism duplicated it 1999 times or were 500 tossed and then some neutral mechanism duplicated it three times or was each individual coin tossed.

The point being that it is nonsense to talk about the CSI in an outcome. It depends on the target and the chance hypothesis you are assuming which underlies it. Demski’s own formula makes that clear. Your example makes the point rather nicely.

Why make the 2000 fair coin example needlessly difficult? Does invoking unnecessary fancy math and information theory add force to the arguments or does it just add confusion? Maximized uncertainty is not expected to make 100% coins by many sigmas, therefore we can reject the chance hypothesis. Simple!

If CSI methods can’t reject the chance hypothesis in such a simple manner, then IDists ought to reconsider using CSI arguments in the first place.

69 thoughts on “CSI Comedy

  1. Doesn’t it compress to “all coins heads”?

    Yes, meaning it has low algorithmic information, low algorithmic complexity.

    Yet another reason the Explanatory Filter should not involve information theory arguments.

  2. *high five Sal* – *winks at Mung*. Oh, FYI Joe Gallien said some mean things about you on his well-read blog.

  3. Is poly(76)phenylalanine more or less ‘designed’ than

    MQIFVKTLTGKTITLEVEPSDTIENVKAKIQDKEGIPPD
    (-)
    QQRLIFAGKQLEDGRTLSDYNIQKESTLHLVLRLRGG

    ?

  4. A reminder that speculation about other posters’ motivation is against the Game Rules of this site.

    Address the case being made, not the perceived motivations of the person making the case.

  5. Right on cue, stcordova is back to coin tossing! Yet for some strange unspoken reason, he simply won’t address the problems with ideology that he has (perhaps unknowingly) identified about himself in his IDist YECism. stcordova is thus a classic case of a man who doesn’t yet recognise that he can be an orthodox man of faith and still reject both YECism & IDism as ideologies that damage and distort more than they benefit or elevate Abrahamic theists.

    Is stcordova as gullible, naïve & full of hubris as Dembski was to suggest a human being can ‘eliminate chance’, regardless of what wiser men than Dembski have warned about such simplistic logic?!

  6. By chance, I mean a process that maximizes uncertainty. An uncertainty maximizing process can easily be rejected as an explanation for the 2000 coins being heads through basic probability.

    Sounds like you’re trying to make a 2LOT argument!

  7. Tom English,

    Nice to hear from you! Yes, please lets call the whole thing off. I don’t participate much in defense of ID’s use of information theory arguments anymore. I’ve certainly called the whole thing off.

    Btw, thanks for the Ginger Rogers video. 🙂

  8. Is stcordova as gullible, naïve & full of hubris as Dembski was to suggest a human being can ‘eliminate chance’, regardless of what wiser men than Dembski have warned about such simplistic logic?!

    You are misreading Dembski’s works, Bill never said every possible chance hypothesis is eliminated, only a given chance hypothesis in question.

    Btw, no need to be insulting and condescending toward Bill or me. You have a habit of making things awfully personal when questions at hand are simply mathematical.

  9. stcordova: You are misreading Dembski’s works, Bill never said every possible chance hypothesis is eliminated, only a given chance hypothesis in question.

    Oh, Sal, Slimy Sal.

    From Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence:

    Next, define p = P(T|H) as the probability for the chance formation for the bacterial flagellum. T, here, is conceived not as a pattern but as the evolutionary event/pathway that brings about that pattern (i.e., the bacterial flagellar structure). Moreover, H, here, is the relevant chance hypothesis that takes into account Darwinian and other material mechanisms.

    The crucial cut-off, here, is M·N· ? S(T)·P(T|H) < 1/2: in this case, the probability of T happening according to H given that all relevant probabilistic resources are factored is strictly less than 1/2, which is equivalent to ? ~ = –log2[M·N· ? S(T)·P(T|H)] being strictly greater than 1.

    Then we get the tap-dancing:

    Granted, this would eliminate all the chance hypotheses in {Hi}i?I, but would it eliminate all chance hypotheses überhaupt? Probabilistic arguments are inherently fallible in the sense that our assumptions about relevant probability distributions might always be in error. Thus, it is always a possibility that {Hi}i?I omits some crucial chance hypothesis that might be operating in the world and account for the event E in question. But are we to take this possibility seriously in the absence of good evidence for the operation of such a chance hypothesis in the production of E? Indeed, the mere possibility that we might have missed some chance hypothesis is hardly reason to think that such a hypothesis was operating. Nor is it reason to be skeptical of a design inference based on specified complexity. Appealing to the unknown to undercut what we do know is never sound epistemological practice. Sure, we may be wrong. But unknown chance hypotheses (and the unknown material mechanisms that supposedly induce them) have no epistemic force in showing that we are wrong. Inquiry can throw things into question only by taking other things to be fixed. The unknown is not a fixed point. It cannot play such a role.

    But in the end even Dembski has to admit:

    Certainly it is a necessary condition, if a design inference is to hold, that all relevant chance hypotheses be eliminated.

    {emphasis added.}

  10. stcordova: You are misreading Dembski’s works, Bill never said every possible chance hypothesis is eliminated, only a given chance hypothesis in question.

    Then demonstrate the EF in action and put all doubts to rest?

    🙂

  11. Appealing to the unknown to undercut what we do know is never sound epistemological practice. Sure, we may be wrong. But unknown chance hypotheses (and the unknown material mechanisms that supposedly induce them) have no epistemic force in showing that we are wrong.

    Bill Dembski

    Well said.

  12. Sal,

    Dembski shoots himself in the foot with that statement, as I explained to vjtorley:

    vjtorley:

    I also object to your phrase, “all possible evolutionary pathways.” A more rational criterion would be: “all known evolutionary pathways, after making diligent inquiry.” In real life, we make decisions based on what we know. Of course they’re fallible, but that’s life.

    That would be fine, except for this: Dembski claims that his method produces no false positives.

    He writes:

    Only things that are designed had better end up in the net. If this is the case, we can have confidence that whatever the complexity-specification criterion attributes to design is indeed designed. On the other hand, if things end up in the net that are not designed, the criterion will be worthless.

    I want then to argue that specified complexity is a reliable criterion for detecting design. Alternatively, I want to argue that the complexity-specification criterion successfully avoids false positives.

    Intelligent Design, pp. 141-142 [Emphasis added]

    Dembski has written a check he can’t cash. If he can’t guarantee that he has accounted for all possible evolutionary pathways, then he can’t guarantee that his method avoids false positives.

    By Dembski’s own criterion, his method is “worthless”.

  13. Keiths,

    Though I don’t agree with your uncharitable reading of what Bill wrote, I will agree that an EF can return a false positive if the underlying chance hypothesis is a substantially wrong model of reality.

    It cannot return a false positive (not chance) relative to the assumed chance distribution. Illustration, I have a coin that is mostly fair, and even if it were biased, the expectation value would not exceed 60% heads. To assert 1000 such coins all heads is not the result of chance is, by industry standards, not a false positive.

    PS
    By chance I mean maximized uncertainty….

  14. “questions at hand are simply mathematical.” – stcordova

    In the end, no, neither IDism nor what is called by the DI as ‘IDT’ (or just uppercase ID) is ‘simply mathematical.’ It didn’t start that way (with Thaxton & Johnson) and isn’t that way now.

    What is concerning is the IDist attempt to hijack ‘design’ for its own neo-creationist purposes, shoving aside other legitimate meanings. It has been called out for this by both atheists and theists. Yet IDists simply ignore this and other valid criticisms, put down their heads and try to ram IDism into USAmerican culture (like a ‘wedge) through their largely fundamentalist, evangelical and Protestant church channels, which ultimately overlap into society at large. That’s a simple social fact of the IDM.

    The coin-flipping ruse has been a joke from the start. That’s why I called stcordova out for IDism’s probabilism in the other thread. To which, right on cue, stcordova responded with this thread about coin tossing.

    “I’d like to claim direct evidence of creation and design” – stcordova

    Is that really what you’d like or is it just wishful thinking? You can easily & powerfully do that … on the level of human creations, manufactures & designs/designing. This was said in the other recent thread to which stcordova didn’t respond.

    “how credible it is to reject the chance hypothesis for an artifact.” – stcordova

    News flash, stcordova: ‘artifacts/artefacts’ are designed-manufactured BY DEFINITION. That’s what it means to be an artifact/artefact – an object made by a human being!

    Thus, all of this ‘search’ for ‘chance hypotheses’ in order to try to prove that chance is eliminated…therefore uppercase Design (i.e. natural theology) is simply wrong-headed and imo also wrong-hearted.

    Repeat: stcordova is thus a classic case of a man who doesn’t yet recognise that he can be an orthodox man of faith and still reject both YECism & IDism as ideologies that damage and distort more than they benefit or elevate Abrahamic theists. Perhaps in his ‘heart of hearts’ stcordova knows this, which is why it is so hard for him to respond to anything but coin tosses & with Dembski-Behe-Meyer idolising. Why not let them go and move forward?

    It could be both a comedy and a tragedy, the way stcordova is going about his IDist/YECist apologetics.

  15. Gregory,

    You continue one making discussions personal and analyzing motives. The topic is disagreements about CSI among IDists based on math. You’re putting out Off Topic junk.

    Aren’t you allowed to vomit out you personal attacks by starting your own threads or better yet your own website? Please stay on topic.

    Much as I disagree with others here, I don’t use the low rude tactics that you seem eager to resort to.

    If I didn’t have such a high regard for TSZ rules, I’d say something here, but well there are other venues to express views I won’t say here lest they end up in guano.

  16. stcordova,

    You avoid serious challenges to your position & act like nothing is wrong with your whole IDist/YECist paradigm. But there is quite obviously something wrong with it. And I’m not calling you ‘slimy Sal’; simply pointing out social facts. It’s not about ‘motives’, but about following your words as facts where they lead.

    Social scientists talk in a different way than natural scientists talk. There is nothing ‘personal’ implied in what I wrote, in the way that you mean ‘personal’ (i.e. insulting). Technically speaking, ALL discussions are ‘personal’ because persons are making them. What I’ve written is not ad hom, but about a person’s views as I read them, which I usually back up with quotations from that person.

    So, for example, when I write the following, why don’t you face it?:

    News flash, stcordova: ‘artifacts/artefacts’ are designed-manufactured BY DEFINITION. That’s what it means to be an artifact/artefact – an object made by a human being!

    I can offer my own answer about ‘why’, but perhaps you could simply answer these kinds of basic questions that severely undermine your IDist/YECist position. To not answer them shows a lack of conversational ability or unwillingness to dignify a serious challenge to the way you communicate about IDT & IDism.

    That response is direct to your statement in the OP:

    “how credible it is to reject the chance hypothesis for an artifact.” – stcordova

    That statement is obviously wrong BY DEFINITION. Would you now care to change it because your language is simply sloppy? And no large or small amount of mathematics will help you with that. It’s a communications issue.

    Yet another waste of time thread about flipping coins likely won’t offer you any hope of progress to potentially outgrow your Dembski blind spots or reliance on probabilism in tying to make a case for (apologetics) IDT. Again, these ‘blind spots’ are simply observations, such as what social scientists make all the time. They are not in any way ‘personal attacks’, are not meant or ‘designed’ that way and should not be read as such. So please calm yourself. Does that help?

  17. gregory,

    With respect to a hypothesized chance distribution, such as equiprobable heads tails for 500 coins, is it correct to say chance (under that distribution) should be rejected as an explanation when subject to a process that maximizes uncertainty?

    A simple yes or no would suffice.

  18. Btw, I agree with this statement:

    “IDists ought to reconsider using CSI arguments in the first place.”

  19. Is 500 or 2000 coin flips considered as an ‘artifact/artefact’?

    Can anyone else here offer an explanation/help me to understand what is wrong or so hard about acknowledging that ‘artifacts/artefacts’ are designed-manufactured BY DEFINITION?

  20. Gregory,

    Can anyone else here offer an explanation/help me to understand what is wrong or so hard about acknowledging that ‘artifacts/artefacts’ are designed-manufactured BY DEFINITION?

    There’s nothing hard or wrong about it, but it doesn’t answer the question that ID proponents are asking, which is: Can we identify something as designed when we don’t know how it originated?

  21. Sal,

    Though I don’t agree with your uncharitable reading of what Bill wrote…

    My reading isn’t uncharitable. Dembski’s own words:

    On the other hand, if things end up in the net that are not designed, the criterion will be worthless.

    Sal:

    …I will agree that an EF can return a false positive if the underlying chance hypothesis is a substantially wrong model of reality.

    Where “substantially wrong” simply means that it fails to account for one or more mechanisms that put the phenomenon within reach of “chance and necessity.” Since that is always possible, Dembski cannot guarantee the absence of false positives.

    It’s the classic argument from ignorance, coupled with design as the default conclusion: Given phenomenon X, look around for explanations in terms of chance or necessity. If you can’t find any, the default conclusion applies: X is designed.

  22. With Dembski’s previous (pre-2006) definition of CSI (what Sal once called CSI1), CSI was intended as showing that the degree of adaptation was out of reach of “chance” processes such as pure mutation, unaided by natural selection. The Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information was then supposed to guarantee that CSI could not be achieved by other evolutionary forces, such as natural selection.

    The LCCSI turned out not to prove any such thing, so there was no guarantee that CSI1 could not be put into the genome by natural selection.

    Enter CSI2. It has the additional condition that it’s not CSI unless there is no natural process that can achieve it. At which point CSI became, not a way to show that natural processes could not achieve the adaptation, but an after-the-fact designation that you could only use if you had some other method of proving that natural processes could not do the job. From a central tool, CSI became an after-the-fact add-on of no importance.

  23. From a central tool, CSI became an after-the-fact add-on of no importance.

    Devastating, if you were someone that thought “Intelligent Design” had any merit.

  24. Gregory:
    Can anyone else here offer an explanation/help me to understand what is wrong or so hard about acknowledging that ‘artifacts/artefacts’ are designed-manufactured BY DEFINITION?

    Are you dropping your earlier claim that an artefact must be “an object made by a human being”?

  25. “There’s nothing hard or wrong about it…”

    Thanks for that, keiths. I wonder if stcordova knows how it looks to others (not just to himself) that he so far fails to acknowledge this?

    “but it doesn’t answer the question that ID proponents are asking, which is: Can we identify something as designed when we don’t know how it originated?”

    This is only partially true b/c IDism depends on both analogy (with lowercase design, i.e. human design) & univocal predication of (uppercase) Design. To the 2nd, because IDists believe we are created imago Dei, they univocally predicate design with Design. To the 1st, we do know how much of human designs originate, though of course not all of it. So IDism is a small cottage industry (largely among YECists & evangelical Protestants) of implicationism – design that implies Design as apologetics aimed at atheists (i.e. materialists, physicalists, reductionists, naturalists, etc. – even if those ideologists do not always require or embrace atheism).

    If what you’re suggesting is that IDist notions of ‘design/Design’ are a category error, I’m largely in agreement. That does nothing, of course, to change the widespread acceptance of (non-IDist) ‘design arguments’ across the range of Abrahamic theology/worldview. I reject the stain of IDism that Mung still represents & the IDism & YECism that stcordova still desires to wear in his personal self-labelling.

    Adrian Bejan speaks of ‘design in nature’ without a Designer and the DI brass have thus far avoided his views. But that’s largely because he’s an atheist who thinks he’s come up with a greater idea than Darwin (or Newton).

  26. “Are you dropping your earlier claim that an artefact must be “an object made by a human being”?”

    No, that is how ‘artefact’ is commonly signified.

  27. Gregory, so an object made by a machine is not therefore an artefact? Say, an antenna design created by an evolutionary algorithm?

  28. stcordova: Well said.

    You mean well danced.

    Billy:

    Certainly it is a necessary condition, if a design inference is to hold, that all relevant chance hypotheses be eliminated.

    Sally:

    You are misreading Dembski’s works, Bill never said every possible chance hypothesis is eliminated, only a given chance hypothesis in question.

    “A given chance hypothesis”? Nope, Sally, at least all known chance hypotheses as Billy explicitly said. And notwithstanding his risible tapdancing about unknown hypotheses, unknown hypotheses are the huge hole in the bottom of the ship. Again, “all relevant chance hypotheses must be eliminated”. He’s explicitly acknowledging that all relevant chance hypotheses, known or unknown, must be eliminated.

    That cannot be done.

    The ship has foundered..

  29. stcordova:
    Keiths,

    Though I don’t agree with your uncharitable reading of what Bill wrote, I will agree that an EF can return a false positive if the underlying chance hypothesis is a substantially wrong model of reality.

    Yhat’s hypotheses.

    And if an unknown chance hypothesis is the only one that is a substantially correct model of reality?

    Oops.

  30. JonF: Yhat’s hypotheses.

    And if an unknown chance hypothesis is the only one that is a substantially correct model of reality?

    Oops.

    Let;s keep in mind that, in its original form, the argument has a Conservation Law that was supposed to rule out, mathematically, that any such unknown process could exist.

    Alas, the Conservation Law doesn’t do that, as it is not correctly formulated to be able to do that (it changes the specification in midstream).

    So now, as you note, in the present Dembski formulation, we have no way of ruling out unknown types of mechanisms, including unknown natural selection.

  31. And if an unknown chance hypothesis is the only one that is a substantially correct model of reality?

    Oops.

    What probability do you affix to there being a naturalistic mechanism vs. an intelligent God behind the origin of life? What is your inferential method for calculating that probability?

    But if the creationists are right, oops for you. 🙂

  32. Natural mechanism vs. naturalistic mechanism – ideologically naïve IDists conflate these.

    Probabilism-oriented stcordova dodges serious challenges to his way of thinking, communicating & perceiving yet again, in this thread & another.

    Why can an orthodox theist not faithfully & logically reject IDism & YECism? Or can he or she? It seems we can and should.
    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/john-glenn-93-says-schools-teach-evolution-ruminates-102111698.html

    stcordova wants people to turn ‘nature’ (& coin tosses) into an ‘artefact’ due to his univocal predication of Creator with created human ‘inference’; an IDist idolatry.

    Flip a coin to decide truth much, stcordova? Not a model theology, indeed.

  33. “if the creationists are right”

    They are neither right nor wrong. They are ideologists. Period.

    Lump in throat – swallow medicine. I-d-e-o-l-o-g-y. IDism, YECism, etc.

    Flip coin, ignore personhood, feel better. For now.

  34. Gee, Sal, you didn’t address the issue. Nothing like a good red herring to get you out of a pickle.

    You:

    Bill never said every possible chance hypothesis is eliminated, only a given chance hypothesis in question.

    Billy:

    On the other hand, if things end up in the net that are not designed, the criterion will be worthless.

    And Billy again:

    Certainly it is a necessary condition, if a design inference is to hold, that all relevant chance hypotheses be eliminated.

    So you need to acknowledge the plural rather than singular hypotheses, and you were wrong in claiming that “only a given chance hypothesis” is considered, and you should admit (as Billy has) that we cannot know all relevant chance hypotheses; therefore we may conclude the best the Explanatory Filter can do is “It’s either designed or it’s a false positive and it isn’t designed.” Not particularly useful.

    Addressing your attempt to change the subject:

    stcordova: What probability do you affix to there being a naturalistic mechanism vs. an intelligent God behind the origin of life?What is your inferential method for calculating that probability?

    I don’t have a number or calculation. I do have the experience that there is no unambiguous evidence for an intelligent God whereas we have some evidence (though far from what we would like) for a naturalistic origin of life. And, of course, we have clear and solid explanations for what happened after life originated and how long the Universe, Earth, and life on Earth have been around.

    But if the creationists are right, oops for you.

    Yeah, I can live with that. If I’m wrong I’m wrong. If the Norsemen or Greeks were right, oops for both of us.

  35. stcordova: What probability do you affix to there being a naturalistic mechanism vs. an intelligent God behind the origin of life? What is your inferential method for calculating that probability?

    Do you have such a method, Sal? If so, is it frequentist or Bayesian?

  36. stcordova: What probability do you affix to there being a naturalistic mechanism vs. an intelligent God behind the origin of life?

    Why have you ruled out the possibility of an intelligent god using a naturalistic mechanism?

  37. Just to note that Dembski’s CSI is not specifically designed [puns intended] to apply to the Origin of Life. It is supposed to be applicable to any case of evolutionary change.

    There is a tendency of creationists and ID types to run off to the OOL when pressed. But the CSI argument is supposed to apply more generally. What can be said, more generally, is that it fails to work in all these cases.

  38. And Billy again:

    I’m obviously not defending everything Bill said nor promoting all his methodologies, hence the title of the OP. I would disagree the EF is worthless if all unknown hypotheses are eliminated. Estimates of how things came to be will have some uncertainty associated with them. Eliminating some chance hypotheses are of value.

    If you were wanting me to defend a phrase in isolation by Bill, I won’t. I say the EF has value even if some chance hypotheses are eliminated.

    Yeah, I can live with that. If I’m wrong I’m wrong.

    If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but what do you have to gain if you’re right millions of years from now? Why is the question of worth of relevance? YOU brought up the question of worth!

    Worth in the world of uncertainties weighs payoffs and losses of being right or wrong.

    So if you want me to disagree with Bill’s statement the EF is worthless unless all chance is eliminated, I’ll disagree. From the standpoint of making rational wagers about what is true, the worth of an estimate must be weighed also in terms of payoffs. If mindless processes have made life, and if we conclude that is the case, there is no payoff to that as Bertrand Russell articulated so well in Man’s Freedom to Worship.

    You are making your wager on unknown mechanisms with ZERO payoff for being right. I’m making my wager also on an unknown mechanism (at least not directly known like Moses and the Apostle Paul claim to know), but there is an associated payoff.

    What the EF has demonstrated so far as the Origin of Life is concerned is there is indeed an unknown as far as naturalistic mechanism, and if Trevors and Abel and Yockey are correct, maybe unknowable or non existent even in principle. The EF has eliminated known chance hypotheses as well as the known law hypotheses. Sure these inference can be over turned in the future, but as of now the playing field is level and I’d say in light of Pascal’s wager, in favor of the creationists in terms of expected payoff.

  39. But the CSI argument is supposed to apply more generally. What can be said, more generally, is that it fails to work in all these cases.

    I’m obviously sympathetic to dropping CSI and information theory defense of ID altogether.

    Rejecting chance from the OOL question is more straight forward. I don’t make too many elementary arguments for ID in biological evolution.

  40. stcordova: If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but what do you have to gain if you’re right millions of years from now? Why is the question of worth of relevance? YOU brought up the question of worth!

    Worth in the world of uncertainties weighs payoffs and losses of being right or wrong.

    So if you want me to disagree with Bill’s statement the EF is worthless unless all chance is eliminated, I’ll disagree. From the standpoint of making rational wagers about what is true, the worth of an estimate must be weighed also in terms of payoffs. If mindless processes have made life, and if we conclude that is the case, there is no payoff to that as Bertrand Russell articulated so well in Man’s Freedom to Worship.

    You are making your wager on unknown mechanisms with ZERO payoff for being right. I’m making my wager also on an unknown mechanism (at least not directly known like Moses and the Apostle Paul claim to know), but there is an associated payoff.

    Oh ferchrissakes, not this Pascal’s Wager crap again.

    Sal, your acceptance of PW tells me that you are fine with worshipping the single most heinous deity mankind has ever invented, as long as you imagine that it will pay off for YOU personally, selfishly, your eternal life in paradise.

    Never mind the innocent children who die of malaria. That’s a parasite / vector combination which your Creationism forces you to admit was either specially created, or else was a predictable outcome of the overall Design process including “evolution” in accordance with the Designer’s plan, or at minimum was allowed to continue to exist (after it arose by unplanned and unguided mutation) where your Omnipotent Deity could have at any moment changed it to be non-infectious to us. But no, that’s all perfectly fine with you; you have zero problem with worshipping the God of Malaria. Because you think you get to go to heaven if you wager on that god.

    You, SalCordova, you are a word I can’t say. Not here, anyways.

    It is the moral duty of every decent human being to resist the worship of that deity, yes, even if that deity does in fact exist and does in fact have the power to doom us to eternal torment. Better than tainting my soul with immorality like yours that would forgive such a monster merely for the hope of your own selfish reward.

  41. Do you have such a method, Sal? If so, is it frequentist or Bayesian?

    No, and more generally I do not have a universal method for arriving at answers to all possible questions of importance.

    All that we can do is to use the EF to eliminate whether known or reasonably possible distributions from known data are not viable models for the evolution of a system. I don’t think, short of God making a miracle before our eyes, that ID can be formally demonstrated, we can only make educated guesses.

    That was something of the point I was arguing for here:
    There is no positive case for ID or special creation

    and I agree with this by Bill:

    Sure, we may be wrong.

    With respect to the origin of life, since we are dealing with an historical event, we are dealing with uncertainties that may never be removed.

    The EF for me does not unambiguously prove ID, it eliminates what would otherwise have been a sufficient mechanism to reject ID. My claim of what the EF actually demonstrates is less ambitious than what my fellow ID comrades claim it demonstrates.

    If so, is it frequentist or Bayesian?

    I’m not familiar enough with this to say! You and Mark understand this 10 times better than I.

    Suffice to say, I would rank certain models of evolution (chemical or biological) as so low as to be eliminated, thus some unknown mechanism would have to be ranked higher by default. Whether it is God or some natural mechanism will be debated, but “unknown” or “tbd” would formally work for me.

    I believe the “unknown” is God, and I made the unpopular claim at UD that even if God or some spiritual intelligence is the cause, it can’t be formally demonstrated, certainly not by the EF.

  42. stcordova: I’m not familiar enough with this to say! You and Mark understand this 10 times better than I.

    Well, it was a rhetorical question. My point is that a frequentist probability is useless without a database of frequencies. Which is why Fine-tuning arguments fail (and that seems to be where Search for a Search is going).

    And a Bayesian prior is no better than hunch in the circs, because you still can’t get at the posterior without those damn frequency data.

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