…Gap Highlighter, Design Conjecture
Though I’ve continued to endear myself to the YEC community, I’ve certainly made myself odious in certain ID circles. I’ve often been the lone ID proponent to vociferously protest cumbersome, ill-conceived, ill-advised, confusing and downright wrong claims by some ID proponents. Some of the stuff said by ID proponents is of such poor quality they are practically gifts to Charles Darwin. I teach ID to university science students in extra curricular classes, and some of the stuff floating around in ID internet circles I’d never touch because it would cause my students to impale themselves intellectually.
I have yet another opportunity to make myself yet more odious to the ID community by suggesting information theory should be dropped or at least de-emphasized as a means of making the design argument, especially the use of CSI to implement the Explanator Filter (EF). I claim the EF is adequately and more effectively implemented with CSI-free methods for most biological designs that are debated currently.
TSZ’s very own Patrick/MathGrrl successfully demonstrated the inability of ID proponents to make basic ID inferences in ways that would stand up to university-level scrutiny. I tried to agree with him without having to offend too many IDists in my essay:
Siding with Mathgrrl.
I probably got away with my oblique defiance of the CSI culture at the time because my alternate approach to rejecting the chance hypothesis actually works in demonstrating certain chance hypotheses can be rejected! In fact, those who tried to assail my alternative CSI-free approach became the butt of jokes at UD. I now informally introduce my version of the CSI-free Explanatory Filter.
But first I should mention, I use the phrase “Design Conjecture” vs. “Design Inference”. The word “conjecture” seems to capture the notion that an ID claim might not ever be formally proven nor falsified, but there might be intuitions or beliefs to suppose design could be true. FWIW, at the time of this writing, even in mathematics, there are some conjectures which many could accept as true, but have not yet been nor may ever be proven: List of Conjectures. [My favorite conjecture is Goldbach’s conjecture probably because it is easy to understand.] The phrase word “Design Inference” connotes an assertion that lies beyond the limits of what can actually be formally demonstrated. “Conjecture” captures more the spirit of what ID can formally claim based on what can be formally demonstrated.
The Explanatory Filter can be argued to be a tool to support the design conjecture. And if “design conjecture” seems too ambitious, the EF can be said to be a tool to demonstrate gaps in our knowledge. Rather than saying the EF proves design (as some of my ID comrades argue), I make the more modest claim the EF demonstrates the origin of certain systems are not consistent with certain chance and law hypotheses. The modified CSI-free EF does not eliminate all conceivable non-ID hypotheses.
The CSI-free EF does not argue from ignorance, but rather proves via contradiction. For example, if a proposed mechanism conforms to the binomial distribution, to the extent a system convincingly contradicts that distribution, that distribution is falsified.
Perhaps the simplest (albeit somewhat weak) example of a conjectured design in biology is homochirality. Amino acids are left-handed homochiral, DNAs are right handed homochiral. Though there are a few successful chiral amplification chemistry experiments for amino acids, they fail to maintain homochirality through a polymerization process of diverse amino acids in a supposed pre-biotic soup. Further more, even in the unlikely event amino acids spontaneously polymerize, if they were homochiral, they won’t stay that way for long without an active policing mechanism since thermal agitation at temperatures above freezing will dispense homochirality in short order relative to geological time.
The homochiral feature of life statistically relates to the problem posed by 500 fair coins heads and is at variance with binomial expectation. The CSI-free EF can be said to reject the model of the bionomial distribution to explain the homochiral features of life. If a distribution for a set of coins or amino acids in a polymer are assumed binomial, even if there is modest bias, there are conditions where the chance hypothesis can be operationally rejected. We don’t have to resort to CSI or ambiguous CSI Phi_ST calculations to do this! We can resort to textbook freshman statistical analysis.
On the presumption a binomial distribution accurately models a chance hypothesis for a system, I outlined one method to reject the chance hypothesis using the law of large numbers: LLN vs Keiths and Eigenstate and my other TSZ critics. This was so easy! And there are other comparably easy approaches to reject the chance hypothesis, such as a Chi Squared Test.
I then came to a heretical viewpoint during my writing of alternate approaches to the EF. Why use CSI to implement the Explanatory Filter (EF) at all? It seemed CSI was mostly superfluous and an added unnecessary layer of confusion. The superflousness is demonstrated by this formula:
I = -log2(P)
where P is the probability of an event, I is the measure of information. Restating the probability in terms of negative log2 adds no insight. That sort of logarithmic transformation is clearly useful for communication engineers trying to figure out how to push more more bits through a wire, but it certainly never helped me make a more convincing anti-chance argument!
In the case of 500 coins 100% heads, the P is 1 / 2^500 and I is 500 bits. But this tells us nothing about rejecting the chance hypothesis for the 100% heads. Calculating CSI to reject the chance hypothesis required complicated procedures which practically all IDists at UD could not follow, but which they swore by nonetheless, and certainly few if any were able to execute successfully to Patrick’s satisfaction.
Rather than the CSI method, I resorted to simple statistics. The widely accepted model for the statistics of coins and/or amino acids was the binomial distribution (biased or unbiased). There are 501 possible macrostates for 500 fair coins under the binomial distribution, and 100% heads had the lowest possible multiplicity macrostate, was the farthest configuration from expectation, and would be rejected by chi-square tests for randomness. No need for CSI! The tools to make an unassailable inference with respect to the most widely accepted statistical model of fair coins was available and used in practice for decades, maybe even centuries.
Why not just use basic arguments? For systems as complicated as the algorithmically controlled metabolisms found in life, maybe we just have to be a little creative and thus find much easier ways to implement the EF without doing those blasted Phi_ST calculations!
Can the CSI-free EF be applied to other features of life? I think so, and here is an example in outline (not elaborated) form. By convention we view a conceptual divide between hardware and software. The same software can be run on computers made of different materials – silicon, halfnium or DNA-RNA-PROTEINS. Hardware cannot as a matter of principle determine the essential details of the software, but instead must allow necessary degrees of configurational freedom. We sometimes measure those degrees of freedom in bits, but lets not go there for now. 🙂
One particular set of algorithms of interest to ID are Quines. In addition to Quines another set of algorithms of interest would be those that drive von Neumann Universal Constructors. A few scientists view life as implementing such wonderful devices as Quines and von Neumann Constructors.
If life indeed implements these devices, as a matter of principle, life software cannot be reduced to law any more than the essential features of software can be explained in terms of hardware. Furthermore, the chance hypothesis cannot be an explanation for such software constructs even in principle. Additionally, as far as OOL is concerned, Darwinian selection (even assuming it works, which it really doesn’t) is inapplicable to OOL or should I say Origin of Quines and Origin of von Neumann Constructors.
It is no surprise then that individuals like Don Johnson, who hold two PhD’s (one in chemistry, the other in computer science) and who researched recombinant DNA, accept ID. And it is no surprise there are a few closet ID sympathizers in the engineering community. They understand the Origin of Life problem is not one of chemistry, but of software, and not just any kind of software, software associated with Quines and von Neumann Constructors.
Many years ago I had a discussion with Tom English at ARN over how improbable a Turing complete system might be as a matter of principle. I recall the numbers would be astronomical for Hofstadter’s example of a Turing system for DNA as stated in Gödel, Escher, Bach, but I could not get a generalized answer from anyone thereafter. I never had a chance to finish the discussion….
What I eventually realized however was that it’s not a matter of how simple an algorithm can be made, but that extravagant algorithms of extreme Rube Goldberg complexity exists in life that defy expectation from ordinary processes. Sure replicators can spontaneously form, but when a replicator forms that is astronomically far from expectation, thoughts of a Designer, a Creator God begin come into the mind of some. We don’t have to use theologically loaded words like “miracle” or “supernatural”, but we can use euphemisms like “astronomically far from scientific expectation.” 🙂
So what is the CSI-free Explantory Filter? It is a filter that does not use CSI but rather basic science, logic, mathematics and cybernetics to reject or make less believable known or claimed law and chance mechanisms as explanations for certain features of the universe.
[Title shortened by Lizzie]
This is your problem, Sal. “Astronomically far from expectation” is fine as poetry but useless as math. How do you calculate how far a replicator is “from expectation”?
Given what?
This is the same problem as the ID you reject faces: how to compute an expected value without a clear null.
Given known knowledge. I said the CSI-free EF is a gap highlighter, not a proof there might not be some God-free, ahem, I mean designer-free mechanism.
If we all agree there is a substantial gap for a certain feature in question, then we have agreement there is a gap.
If one wants to believe the odds aren’t really astronomically remote because we assume the wrong models, fine, that is a belief, it is not proven science.
Mindless OOL has no workable model, in fact experimental evidence argues against it. But if one wants to believe science can solve it, by all means go for it. I stated reasons why I believe Quines and von Neumann Constructors won’t ever spontaneously arise even principle. You don’t have to accept what I said, but if one wishes to extinguish the ID intuition, one has to deliver some believable model.
Btw, you or anyone is welcome to agree or disagree with my assessment of CSI as it relates to the EF. 🙂
Well, show your work. How do you get “astronomically far from expectation”? Seriously, how do you calculate it?
I don’t see your reasons – I just see an assertion.
Don’t mean to sound curt – just posting between runs of an analysis!
1. There is no reason to believe that life requires a Turing-complete system. All that is needed is replication with errors.
2. Believe it or not, several people have studied the probability of replicators emerging spontaneously from digital “soup”. The answer is that in these simulations, the probability is not absurdly low. See, for example,
J. R. Koza. Artificial life: spontaneous emergence of self-replicating and evolutionary self-improving computer programs. In C. G. Langton, editor, Artificial Life III, pp. 225–262. Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Hui-Hsien Chou and James A. Reggia, Emergence of self-replicating structures in a cellular automata space, Physica D 110 (1997), 252-276
Greg Studer and Hod Lipson, Spontaneous emergence of self-replicating, competing cube species in physical cube automata, Proc. GECCO 2005.
A. N. Pargellis, The spontaneous generation of digital “Life”, Physica D 91 (1996), 86-96.
shallit,
Hi Jeff! I’ve not see you here before I think, so…welcome?
Now just figure out the odds of a designer that would exist without leaving evidence of its housing, eating, and fire habits.
Of course there aren’t really any odds, because such a thing has never been observed.
Glen Davidson
Hod Lipson is one of the fathers of http://www.nutonian.com/products/eureqa/ which is mentioned here: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=3085
He’s also a really nice guy.
No, it’s rare, but he shows up occasionally.
May as well make him welcome, though…
Glen Davidson
I approve of getting rid of the “information” nonsense. However, I often wonder whether that was aimed more at gullible rubes in pews. And maybe it works with them.
Quines and von Neumann constructors are products of design. And designed things are usually very different from evolved things. So I doubt that you can get much guidance by thinking about Quines or about von Neumann constructors.
Except that life on our planet looks pretty algorithmic. Even salt-crystals “replicate”. The OOL problem is the replicator is far outside expectation, we know qualitatively because dead things stay dead.
Thanks anyway for your comment and list of references.
And finally biological systems are arguably the most foundational Turing complete system in the known universe since it’s biological organisms that create Turing complete languages like Java, Python, C, etc.
Take that, Jesus!
No problem.
It’s a topic worthy of further discussion, as I said, I put things in outline form, not elaboration. I’ve not said anything that other OOL scientist haven’t occasionally alluded to, so I didn’t feel urgent need to elaborate.
But as far as experimental evidence that argues such systems are far outside expectation: dead things stay dead (short of God working a miracle).
If Pasteur had lost the spontaneous generation challenge, I’d probably no longer be a Christian, maybe some sort of agnostic or pantheist. The Wells humpty dumpty challenge gives at least qualitative support that life occupies a configuration far outside expectation.
If we had seen other computer-robot like systems spontaneously spring up with different DNAs or chemistries, then I’d have little reason to believe in ID.
There certainly would be no reason to think that evolution should happen, in that case.
Evolution meets the problem of life not spontaneously arising, and the problem of never seeing any designer designing life from scratch.
I can’t really think that you have the slightest sound evidence to believe in ID. And no explanation at all for the reason why life demonstrates the limits of non-poof evolution, one reason why ID has never been close to being a productive science.
Glen Davidson
shallit,
“The results of this study and previous work are encouraging in that they suggest that computational models of self-replicating structures may be used effectively to explore hypotheses related to the origins of life.”
And yet we are no where closer to explaining the origin of life today then we were in 1997, why is that? Perhaps this is because, as Paul Davies and Sara Walker explained, that is, because the problem is not the origin of self-replication, but the origin of non-trivial self-replication.
Yes, we are a lot closer.
This is the problem, I suggest, RoP and Sal, with basing your beliefs on a gap. It seems quite likely to me that the OoL “gap” will be filled within the next few decades or so – or at least that we will have a plausible pathway from plausible early-earth conditions to early protocells, possible even demonstrated in a lab.
I could be wrong. But I certainly wouldn’t want to base any religious faith on the hunch that it wouldn’t happen.
The world will be no less wonderful if it does than if it doesn’t. We will simply know more about it, is all.
It won’t mean it wasn’t created by a good god, any more than the success of the Copernican model meant that it wasn’t created by a good god.
Oh ye of little faith!
The funny thing is that everything you say here is equally based on belief on the very same gap. Scientifically, what matters is who makes the best prediction, right?
In biology, even the gaps between species have not been explained yet, and for example Aristotelians “predict” that there cannot be a materialistic explanation to this anyway. So far so true, consistently. Similarly, I would not be optimistic about the origin of life. The origin of life is a much more difficult case than the gaps between species.
Well, pioneers get lauded, but the essential point is that theories that make testable predictions that are supported by observation and experiment tend to get accepted. A better theory comes along and scientific knowledge expands.
Species are defined as a breeding population of organisms. Breeding isolation leads to speciation. Though from a historical point of view, species boundaries are arbitrary, as there has to be an unbroken chain of descent from parent to offspring for every extant species from LUCA
If by using scare-quotes, you mean “assert”, I guess that might be true.
Maybe even intractable, as the evidence of life that may have existed on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago is too sparse to be able to say much with certainty about its biochemistry.
ETA link
Lizzie, you are a true believer.
But contrast your optimism with the more sober assessments by origin of life researchers:
“Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin of life field is a failure – we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth.” (Koonin 2011)
Lizzie, this is a very naive way of looking at the history of science. As more sophisticated philosophers of science have pointed out, gaps in science is not simply these things that get filled as knowledge progresses. In fact, it is the opposite, knowledge more often exposes deeper gaps we never knew were there in the first place. 200 years ago, we had no idea that there was such a thing as a genetic code, or fine-tuned laws of physics (heck, we assumed the origin of life was essentially a case of: just add water), and yet as far as naturalistic explanations go, these gaps are sitting here wide open today.
Finally, gaps need not be gaps of ignorance. Take the famous figures on Easter island, so far as unguided natural processes are concerned, there is a real gap here, but this is not a gap of ignorance, this is a gap in the very fabric of nature.
No, we don’t yet have a “validated scenario”. But, as even Koonin pointed out in 2011, we have many interesting results – many potential pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and a great deal more than we had in 1997.
And Koonin’s opinion is not fact. Other researchers might disagree. Check out the work from the Szostak lab.
Sure, every time we discover something, we discover something we do not know. Our models are always, and always will be, simplifications of reality. Rather than talk about “gaps” (not my word), it is more useful I think to talk about “model fit”.
But IDists insist on pointing to “gaps” as though the fact that there are things we do not know is evidence for a Designer. It isn’t, as is evidenced by the frequency with which we find answers to questions whose prior lack of answer was supposed to be evidence for God.
Even if we were to conclude that there is “a gap in the very fabric of nature” – it still wouldn’t be evidence for God.
It wouldn’t be evidence against God either, but then I’m not saying it is, and I know of few people who do.
I’m not sure what the Easter Island figures have to do with anything though. Lots of things are “guided” with no help from any Designer. How else would winds blow or rivers flow?
Elizabeth,
And here is Paul Davies and Sarah Walker on the type of work carried out by Szostak and co:
“due to the organizational structure of systems capable of processing algorithmic (instructional) information, it is not at all clear that a monomolecular system – where a single polymer plays the role of catalyst and informational carrier – is even logically consistent with the organization of information flow in living systems, because there is no possibility of separating information storage from information processing (that being such a distinctive feature of modern life). As such, digital–first systems (as currently posed) represent a rather trivial form of information processing that fails to capture the logical structure of life as we know it.”
“Although trivial self-replicators can undergo Darwinian evolution [23, 24], the lack of separation between algorithm and implementation implies that mono-molecular systems are divided from known life by a logical and organizational chasm that cannot be crossed by mere complexification of passive hardware. In that respect we regard the case of the RNA world as currently understood as falling short of being truly living.”
Darwin in making his case for unguided evolution kept referring to “gaps” for the creation model in accounting for the evidence. The critique of creationism was for Darwin part of his package (some would say was crucial, since Darwin presented “embarrassingly little evidence” in favor of his most important claims to quote an eminent evolutionist), and likewise, for ID a critique of unguided evolution is also part of the package, but obviously not the whole package.
From the physicalist historical point of view, species boundaries are so arbitrary that they have no reason to be there in the first place. Yet they are there, they are consistent, and they are only crossed by human intervention. The fossil record shows this how it has been since time immemorial.
So, what gives?
By the quotes I meant perhaps you don’t accept it as a scientific prediction. At any rate, it’s a premise that holds and shows no signs of wavering. In other words, it’s true for all practical purposes, perfectly in line with scientific observations.
I was trying to illustrate a point. So far as unguided processes go, the easter island figures will never be explained successfully invoking unguided natural processes, no matter how much scientific knowledge we gain over time. There is a gap here, but it is not a gap of ignorance.
Why is there a gap?
Being a gambling man, in 2005, I wagered top OOL researcher Robert Hazen at GMU, colleague of one of my GMU professors, James Trefil a beer when he claimed in 2005 that the OOL problem will be solved in 20 years. It is already 2015. The odds are with me. 🙂
The problem of OOL is not fundamentally one of replication, but of extravagance. Darwin said when he saw the peacock’s tail, it made him sick. The extravagance bothered him because natural selection ought to select against extravagance. He came up with a dubious theory called sexual selection to explain it, and whether it does (which it doesn’t) is moot with respect to the extravagance problem in OOL. The problem of OOL is not the emergence of a mere replicator (salt crystals and autocatalytic chemical reactions are “replicators”), it is the emergence of an extravagant, delicate, replicator just on the edge of dying.
The issues isn’t origin of replicators, but why extravagant algorithmic replicators exist.
Consider the illustration of a small marble ball released into a bowl.
Here is a photo of some bowl:
glass bowl
Here is a photo of a marble ball (actually I think it’s made of glass):
marble ball
There can be a great deal of uncertainty in the initial position of the marble when released into the bowl, and it can even have an uncertain velocity to boot as long as it’s not too fast, we can infer from physics, the marble will rest somewhere near the bottom of the bowl. That is we know the system eventually evolves to have the small marble ball at the bottom of the bowl.
If we found the one or a few marble at the bottom of some bowl-like container, we wouldn’t give it much thought. We accept bowls and marbles balls are man-made, but we wouldn’t infer an extra layer of design by seeing it at the bottom of the bowl.
Now on the other hand we saw a marble of two or three resting on the rim of the bowl, we’d think, “that seems unlikely”. I’d even suppose for most bowls one would need a bit of adhesive to help the marbles balance on the rim. Like a house of cards, the configuration is far from expectation.
The real problem of OOL is not chemical replication but the extravagance of algorithmic replication. A purely chemical replication can begin from a relatively unspecific (unspecified) state like a marble released into a bowl and then it coalesces into a well-defined state at the end. An algorithmic replicator (though made of chemicals) is at the edge of stability, it must be in a well-defined initial state for it to work.
Ok, some specifics. An algorithmic replicator, even if not a full blown Turing complete system needs a means of reading from a memory bank. That means it has a means of putting the read head to the right start location and then terminating at the right stop location. Whatever the chemistry involved, for the extravagance of algorithmic replication, this is the bare minimum a necessary condition but not sufficient condition.
In living systems on planet earth, we have start codons (usually the methionine “atg” codon, but occasionally a few alternate start codons). We also have stop codons (three of them). But consider for a moment what happens if in there is no stop codon in a DNA-to-protein system. The read head just keeps going to the end of the DNA strand (or tape). Oh well, the organism never comes to life, so much for Darwinian selection being a cure-all to explain the design of algorithmic replicator.
A similar problem happens without a means of a start codon. There is a interdependent complexity or relationship in the parts, and without all the conceptual parts in place, there is no extravagant algorithmic replicator. We can then formally codify the needed parts of such an algorithmic replicator. We would need regulation (too many or too little of various parts like proteins would be bad juju, for example), etc.
The codified list of conceptual components (independent of chemistry) look something like — voila — a von Neumann Constructor!
As far as me claiming life occupies a configuration that is astronomically far from scientific expectation, I’m not unique in asserting that claim. Dawkins said life is so improbable (the proper term is far from expectation) that he supposes it emerged only once in this universe. Koonin sees the problem and “solves” it with a multiverse. Moran praised Koonin’s book.
But we agree there is a gap. You believe the gap exist because of lack of knowledge, I argue a gap exists because science is trying to solve the gap by showing life is close to expectation (expected outcomes), when logically speaking life is away from expectation as a matter of principle because of the extravagance of algorithmic replication. Darwin was sickened to see the Peacock’s tail because he knew such extravagance was evidence against natural selection. If he were alive today, he ought to be even sicker if studied the extravagance of algorithmic replication.
I think I won’t have to buy Dr. Hazen a beer in 2025. 🙂
What year will you have proof that god did it?
stcordova,
I think we’d need to be rather careful about assuming that modern systems define the entire capacity of all possible systems. The first competent replicator need not have had a protein translation system of any kind.
I’ll make the distinction again between spacial and temporal separation. Bifurcations into separate species generally happen as a result of genetic isolation which may result, especially where the populations of organisms occupy different niches (and are subject to different selective pressure) in those populations becoming phenotypically and geneticallly different enough to be considered separate species. But looking at the process over the time of many generations while this is happening, the change from one generation to the next is not different from the variation that occurs between parent and offspring. So the point at which one species becomes another is blurred when looked at over a few generations.
Well, genome sequencing and molecular phylogenetics have clarified many doubtful areas of classification.
The fossil record goes back possibly 3.7 billion years and is remarkably consistent with molecular analysis and the model of branching nested hierarchy. I’m not sure what you mean by “only crossed by human intervention”.
For me, the current theory of evolution seems a remarkably good fit to the evidence we have so far. Are you not persuaded?
I don’t see the statement as having any predictive power or any way anyone could test the claim so no, not a scientific hypothesis.
Not sure about that. It sounds just like an opinion that some hold for particular reasons. What Dawkins referred to as virtuoso believing. And as it is untestable it does not challenge any scientific hypothesis.
Agreed, but if the replicator is algorithmic it needs a memory reader, start and stop mechanisms. There is no a priori requirement the implementation needs proteins.
In life on the planet, the algorithmic replicator achieved with things like RNA polymerases to read, start and stop codons, sigma factors, etc. Not only is life a replicator, it does so via an extravagant Rube Goldberg pathway of DNA-RNA-Proteins. In addition to the extravagance of an algorithmic replicator, we have the chemical extravagance of DNA-RNA-proteins replication cycle.
Darwin rightly understood natural selection would select the evolution of extravagance. He failed to understand the complexity of life is extravagance.
When we have observed simple chemical type autocatalytic replicators in the lab, if they evolve at all, they evolve toward simplicity on average, and certainly not toward the extravagance of algorithmic replication. The best example that comes to mind is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegelman_Monster
This is a great illustration of why selection would be expected to select against evolution of extravagance. Part of Darwin’s mind understood selection would select against the evolution of complexity, but then another part of him went on to voluminously contradict the one correct intuition he had when looking at a peacock’s tail.
Bill Dembski defined specified complexity in his own way, I define it to be highly specific (specified) configurations that are far from expectation and are highly interdependently complex in the way they maintain that configuration. That is a far more natural description of the specified complexity of life. Bill defined CSI in terms of improbability, I define Specified Complexity in terms of distance from expectation. If we can’t calculate the amount of specified complexity directly, we can qualitatively perceive it in the lab through Humpty Dumpty type experiments.
Theory suggests algorithmic type replicators that have many essential conceptual components of a von Neumann Constructor would occupy a configuration far from expectation independent of the chemistry that would implement such an extravagant replicator. The Humpty Dumpty type experiments agree with that prediction, namely, “dead things stay dead”. Barring a miracle, there is no expectation otherwise.
Another notorious creationist quote mine.
Religion_of_pieces just can’t seem to resist ’em.
It’s from page 391 of Koonin’s book The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution. We can be sure that RoP has not read the book, not even that whole chapter, but has just copied and pasted the quote from a creationist source such as EvolutionNews or UD.
Notice that Koonin’s book is about the nature of evolution (and the origin of evolution as a biological process) not about the actual origin of life, although obviously there is some overlap. I expect Koonin knows more about the OoL than I do, but it was not his focus to study every advance on that question. Also notice that his book was published in 2011, so the most recent research he could have incorporated into his chapter on OoL was from 2010. We’ve learned more in the next five years.
NB: I’m using the term “quotemine” in this case to indicate a short quote taken to prove exactly the opposite of the author’s own thesis. It’s not that Koonin would disavow that specific sentence as a statement of his views at the time. It’s that Koonin would be horrified to see RoP attempting to use the quote to prop up RoP’s fallacious argument, basically “Gotcha! Even your famous biologist despairs of ever solving the OoL because it’s unsolvable until you admit god did it!”.
That makes it a typical crap creationist quotemine.
I understand if christian creationists, who think nothing has changed in two millennia (or muslim creationists, more than a millennia) can’t quite wrap their heads around the concept that we continue to learn better in five years. It must be nice, being set for life with one old text, and never having to learn anything ever again. So soothing, so easy, so mind-numbingly stupid …
And not only is Religion_of_Pieces being stupid in attempting to twist an evolutionary biologist’s words to support creationism, xe’s doing it while attacking Libby as a “true believer”.
What a stinky little pile of crap that whole comment is.
Fwiw, as of 2014 here are OOLers in their own words:
http://www.lifephys.dis.titech.ac.jp/oqol2014/?page_id=180
One of my favorite parts since I’ve studied the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase gene in E. coli strains. They highlight one of many chicken-egg paradoxes. From what is known, without an aa-RS gene there is no way to make an aa-RS protein. Without aa-RS protein there is no way to make an aa-RS gene!
The experimental answer so far is “no”. Dead things stay dead and nothing puts Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Don’t know, that’s why I didn’t bet a beer on it.
I’d almost bet a bottle of malt scotch OOL is not solved to Koonin’s satisfaction by 2020. Any takers?
If I win, you reward me with this one.
If I lose, I reward you with this one. 🙂
I’m willing to bet that a plausible abiotic origin of life is found before the (epistemologically sound) discovery of any reasonable agent that could have done so roughly 4 billion years ago.
Not much of a contest, really, especially since no one knows how to look for good evidence for such an agent.
Glen Davidson
Well, since Koonin speculates in his book (ibid pgs 384-385) that the explanation for successful origin of life on our planet is the MWO (many worlds in one) model, that is
I see that Koonin already thinks he has an answer which satisfies him. Not to be too rude about it, it looks as if Koonin’s answer to the question of OoL is “shit happens because shit can happen.”
Thus, depending on your and Koonin’s mutual agreement as to what constitutes his “satisfaction”, you might have already lost your bet before you even placed it.
Looked at another way, no one can ever be satisfied with any proposed molecule-by-molecule pathway from purely non-organic chemistry to a minimally-complex (that is, something pre-cellular) self-replicating molecule (eg RNA World) which could have been a precursor for life as we know it now . Not even if it’s demonstrated in every step in labs. Why not? Because, no matter how plausible the sequence, we can never know for certain that’s how it actually occurred 4 billion years ago. So the best any honest scientist could say about an OoL “solution” is “I do think that’s likely, more likely than the other pathways that have been proposed; but we can’t say for sure that we’ve solved it.”
And if Koonin is saying what I think he’s saying, he is willing to look at a proposed pathway that does NOT seem (completely) plausible and point out something like .. those steps, those unlikely steps that make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle? Not a miracle, because
If it really did emerge by chance, then we won’t be too dissatisfied if we never determine exactly how that step occurred. That would be silly, like being dissatisfied that we don’t know exactly how we threw the winning dice. It takes a specially petty mind to demand that we must account for every atom from the big bang right up to a dice-holding human before they can be satisfied with the answer.
There’s certainly no evidence that god got its little fingers dirty stirring the molecular soup, or loading the dice so to speak, for the advent of life. OoL happened. Then evolution happened. It happened with no visible guidance or intention, and – as far as we can tell – no moment when guidance would even have been possible, physically, much less necessary.
This is no different from asserting that Allah is God and Muhammed is his prophet.
You are conflating history with your version of history. This is not how science works, by starting with your truth in advance. Yes we know life originated, but we do not know that it evolved spontaneously, in fact, we have good reason to believe it did not happen, there are better odds for your car to have evolved spontaneously. Chance is simply out the window, Koonin knows this, the only way out of this mess for him is to invoke infinite resources, enter the multiverse.
Do we have independent evidence for the multiverse other than evolutionists desperate attempt to get around the problem of limited resources to explain the origin of life, or to explain away the problem of fine-tuning?
In the words of Harvard origin of life researcher:
“Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea. Perhaps it was by the spontaneous emergence of “simple” autocatalytic cycles and then by their combination. On the basis of all the chemistry that I know, it seems to me astonishingly improbable.” (George M. Whitesides 2007)
Tee hee.
As if you have any grounds to criticize anyone on the planet for “asserting” things.
You sure are one funny dude – or dudette – or whatever.
You could quit your day job. An irony-deficient career in stand up awaits you!
Show your math, old bean!
Oh, you can’t? You have no math on your side, you only have stupid quotemines you copy-pasta’d from UD or EvolutionNews?
Aww, shucks, better not quit your day job for a career in science. Stick to the comedy routines.
Guys. Rules.
We haz dem.
Well, I asumed that RoP sincerely does believe that xe is funny!
I mean, I know I don’t have a good sense of humor, not at all. I’m always surprised when I get the point of some joke. And honestly, I know better than to try to tell jokes myself. But from what I see, I’m a serious outlier. Everyone else seems to have a sense of humor and seems to take great delight in saying things they think are funny.
Guess I was wrong to trust my unreliable sense of humor when I burst out laughing out loud at RpP’s “Allah/Mohammed” bit. But I dunno, I’m still grinning an hour later; still seems funny to me.
I assure you, Elizabeth, that in contrast to my often mean and barely-restrained-by-the-rules responses to other IDists, in this case I was genuinely trying to respond with a little light-heartedness of my own. Yeah, of course, goes without saying that I know I can’t have a career in stand-up. But I was trying.
Now I need a sad-faced emoji. 🙁
Don’t worry about it hotshoe 🙂 It was just a general reminder.
stcordova,
Sure. The question remains unanswered. Nonetheless, there is no warrant for assuming that protein code is essential for life. Including protein aaRS’s. The basic reactions of an aaRS can easily be catalysed by RNA.
I think that an OoL generating a cell anything like those of today is indeed completely impossible, not merely unlikely. But that does not mean that I think a non-designed OoL is impossible. In fact I’m very dubious about the capacity of design to ignite the spark where nature fails, so ‘dead things stay dead’ is hardly a plus for ID, is it? A POC would be a bit more persuasive than repetitiously pointing up the failings of ‘natural’ OoL research.
Another point: Spiegelman’s monster actually rewarded reduction in size in the experimental setup. But then, Spiegelman’s monster was not a self-replicator. It could get away with shrinking. You cannot use that experiment to infer that all molecular selection will favour a reduction in size, regardless of circumstances. If longer strings in ‘true’ self-replicators tend to make them better replicators, because the extra functions require nucleic acid to store them in, what do you think will happen to string length in that selective milieu? Spiegelman’s monster became better at being replicated, it did not become a better replicator. This produces a different selective pressure.
Religion_of_pieces,
You’d be better laying off the quote mines. No-one is impressed by what specific individual X or Y has to say on any particular topic. There is almost always someone equally expert one could trot out who disagrees. We might as well get some puppets out and start having a play-fight. You need to debate in your own words.
hotshoe_,
Thank you for taking the time to transcribe the Koonin passage. Unlike some at UD, I’m more friendly to the many-worlds view than most IDists. That’s not to say I absolutely believe it. See:
Many Worlds, One God, Shift Happens
My graduate advisor in Engineering Applied Physics was a world expert in Quantum Computing where many-worlds or at least many virtual worlds are leveraged in order to get the next generation high speed computation. One of my co-workers was a pupil of Stephen Weinberg and worked also on quantum computation — something called the Schorr algorithm, or whatever….
In math we use a lot of representations that have artifacts that may or may not be real such as infinite series or in finite sum decompositions. Whether a single number represents the sum of many worlds or is just a certain way of looking at the world might be at the root of the debate with many worlds or multiverses.
I personally think the many-worlds are merely virtual and are an imaginary byproduct of our mathematical representations much like the imaginary numbers used to model real world electrical engineering circuit behavior. Just my 2 cents.
No one but God will really know the answer to the questions of the multiverse or many worlds. So like many things, we go on with life based on some unprovable conjectures, such conjectures might be labeled faith. This is necessary since to answer all important questions conclusively, one would have to be as omniscient as God, in which case one would probably be God.
That said, if Dr. Hazen wins his beer bet, I think I gulp down a few myself if he ever succeeds in his multi-million dollar lab solving the OOL problem. 🙂
Cheers