Several regulars have requested that I put together a short OP and I’ve agreed to do so out of deference to them. Let me be clear from the outset that this is not my preferred course of action. I would rather discuss in a more interactive way so that I can learn from criticism and modify my thoughts as I go along. OPs are a little too final for my tastes.
I want to emphasize that everything I say here is tentative and is subject to modification or withdraw as feedback is received,
It’s important to understand that I speak for no one but myself it is likely that my understanding of particular terms and concepts will differ from others with interest in ID. I also want to apologize for the general poor quality of this piece I am terrible at detail and I did not put the effort in I should have due mainly to laziness and lack of desire.
With that out of the way:
Background
For the purpose of this discussion I would like to expand upon the work of Phill Mcguire found here and stipulate that cognition can be seen as lossless data compression in which information is integrated in a non-algorithmic process. The output of this process is a unified coherent whole abstract concept that from here forward I will refer to as a specification/target. Mcguire’s work thus far deals with unified consciousness as a whole but I believe his incites are equally valid when dealing with integrated information as associated with individual concepts.
I am sure that there are those who will object to the understanding of cognition that I’m using for various reasons but in the interest of brevity I’m treating it an an axiomatic starting point here. If you are unwilling to accept this proviso for the sake of argument perhaps we can discuss it later in another place instead of bogging down this particular discussion.
From a practical perspective cognition works something like this: in my mind I losslessly integrate information that comprise the defining boundary attributes of a particular target; for instance,”house” has such information as “has four walls”, “waterproof roof”, “home for family”, “warm place to sleep”, as well as various other data integrated into the simple unified “target” of a house that exists in my mind. The process by which I do this can not be described algorithmically. from the outside it is a black box but it yields a specified target output: the concept of “house”.
Once I have internalize what a house is I can proceed to categorize objects I come across into two groups: those that are houses and those that are not. You might notice the similarity of this notion to the Platonic forms in that the target House is not a physical structure existing somewhere but an abstraction.
Argument
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to me to posit that the process of design would simply be the inverse of cognition.
When we design something we begin with a pre-existing specific target in mind and through various means we attempt to decompress it’s information into an approximation of that target. For instance I might start with the target of house and through various means proceed to approximate the specification I have in my mind into a physical object. I might hire a contractor nail and cut boards etc . The fruit of my labor is not a completed house until it matches the original target sufficiently to satisfy me. However, no matter how much effort I put into the approximation, it will never completely match the picture of an ideal house that I see in my mind. This is I believe because of the non-algorithmic nature of the process by which targets originate. Models can never match their specification exactly.
Another good example of the designing process would be the act of composing a message.
When I began to write this OP I had an idea of the target concept I wanted to share with the reader and I have proceeded to go about decompressing that information in a way that I hoped that could be understood. If I am successful after some contemplation a target will be present in your mind that is similar to the one that exists in mine. If the communication was perfect the two targets would be identical.
The bottom line is that each designed object is the result of a process that has at its heart an input that is the result of the non-algorithmic process of cognition (the target). The tee shirt equation would look like this
CSI=NCF
Complex Specified Information is the result of a noncomputable function. If the core of the design process (CSI) is non-computable then the process in its entirety can not be completely described algorithmically,
This insight immediately suggests a way to objectively determine if an object is the result of design. Simply put if an algorithmic process can fully explain an object then it is not designed. I think this is a very intuitive conclusion, I would argue that humans are hardwired to tentatively infer design for processes that we can’t fully explain in a step by step manner. The better we can explain an object algorithmically the weaker our design inference becomes. If we can completely explain it in this way then design is ruled out.
At some point I hope to describe some ways that we can be more objective in our determinations of whether an object/event can be fully explained algorithmically but as there is a lot of ground covered here so I will put it off for a bit. There are also several questions that will need to be addressed before this approach can be justifiably adopted generally such as how comprehensive an explanation must be to rule out design or conversely when we can be confident that no algorithmic explanation is forthcoming.
If possible I would like to explore these in the future perhaps in the comments section. It will depend on the tenor of feed back I receive.
peace
fifth:
There’s that phrase again. You keep using it, but you’re not grasping its importance. It’s fatal to your methodology.
Here’s why: your determination of design depends on whether an observer can consistently distinguish between the original string and a randomly modified copy. But that is always possible at the right resolution.
Every string, whether designed or not, meets your criterion, because there is a resolution at which it is readily distinguishable from randomly modified copies. Your method will identify every finite string as designed at that resolution.
You are inundated with false positives, so your method is useless.
On the other hand, at a sufficiently coarse resolution, every string will fail your criterion because it will be indistinguishable from the randomly modified copies.
At that resolution you are inundated with false negatives, so your method is again useless.
Is there a suitable intermediate resolution? For your method to work, you would need to determine and justify a “correct” intermediate resolution over all other possible resolutions, showing why the comparison game should be a reliable indicator of design at that particular resolution.
Good luck with that.
Assuming, arguendo, that the method does what is claimed, is there a point?
I mean, is there going to be a punch line where we can distinguish evolution from Design?
For example, will the method be useful in the field of molecular evolution?
In its present form it certainly can’t be used to distinguish design from non-design, since that depends on the resolution, and fifth has given us no reason to prefer one resolution over another.
There’s also no reason to expect that there’s a magic resolution that he can discover (particularly a representation-independent one!) at which designed strings are distinguishable from randomly modified copies, but undesigned strings aren’t.
He also still faces the subjectivity problem.
I see very little hope that fifth’s methodology will do what he claims.
The idea behind the Financial Turing Test paper seems sensible, but fifth’s extrapolations do not.
Hmm. If I’m reading you aright here, your ‘method’ is pretty much Dembski’s Explanatory Filter with the serial numbers filed off and a fresh coat of paint. Your “algorithmic processes” would seem to be isomorphic to “Law” in Dembski’s Filter; your “random processes” would seem to be isomorphic to “Chance” in Dembski’s Filter; your ‘method’ and Dembski’s Filter both conclude “yep, it’s Designed” after ruling out Law (= “algorithmic process”, in your ‘method’) and Chaos (= “random processes”, in your ‘method’).
If you don’t think your ‘method’ boils down to Explanatory-Filter-under-an-assumed-name, please explain how and where your ‘method’ differs from the Filter?
cubist,
I see it as being based on the Explanatory Filter, but with a couple of important add-ons:
1. The EF doesn’t specify how you eliminate chance and necessity. It just says that once you do so, you are entitled to infer design. Fifth’s method prescribes a specific procedure, the “line chart game”, for eliminating chance and necessity. (It doesn’t work, but that’s a separate discussion.)
2. Fifth introduces the concept of noncomputability. Dembski wisely avoids this, sticking to probabilistic arguments.
Out of interest, where does it say that in the bible?
In the chapter where it says pi equals three.
I say,
The intermediate resolution is determined by the level of observation. Often this is determined by practical limitations. We can only observe at the level we have the ability to measure but in science we make decisions base on the information we have.
When OMagain first brought this up I told him that the method was only as good and the resolution of the measurement.
If we wanted to set a universal hard bound it would be the plank length. We are unable to measure beyond that level even in principle.
Keiths said,
I say
I agree that the subjectivity problem is important to address.
My hypotheses is that different observers will see the same patterns in the strings and therefore the test can be seen as objective.
I think there are ways that we can test moving forward,
peace
OMagain says,
quote:
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
(Pro 16:33)
end quote:
peace
petrushka asks,
I already use the method to evaluate the strength of forecast models. I think that it could also be used to evaluate the explanatory strength of evolutionary scenarios.
I think it does a good job of testing whether a particular object or event can be explained by evolutionary processes in general as well.
I can think of lots of potentially useful applications if the method can be shown to work generally.
peace
cubists asks
I say,
I think keiths has a pretty good handle on how my method differs from the filter although I would disagree with his pessimistic appraisal and suggest he actually put it to the test.
I think if you look hard enough you will find traces of lots of ID concepts in my method from Irreducible complexity to CSI. There was no deliberate plagiarism of ideas on my part it just worked out that way.
In my opinion it only shows that everyone who is interested in this stuff is seeing the same thing just from different perspectives.
My hope is that these ideas can be expressed in a way that is testable science instead of philosophical speculation
peace
Keiths says,
can you elaborate? I already used my method at my place of work. So far I have not been inundated with false positives or negatives.
I think it’s possible that if we generalized this we might have an unacceptable level of inconclusive results but I have no way of knowing other than to test it.
peace
Hey Keiths,
To give you an idea of how my method can be useful despite being only as good as the resolution measured think of random number generators.
Everyone knows that the numbers that fall out of random number generates are not actually random but we treat them as such because they are random as far as we know.
It might help to think of dice. Determinists or every stripe atheistic or theistic believe that result of a die through are not actually random but we still play board games
peace
Did I miss Fifth’s conclusions of design or not from the long strings posted yesterday?
Doesn’t it? Wasn’t 500 bits-something meant to be the threshold of design?
Fifth has correct noted that the first of my two strings was entirely random. I’m not yet seen any conclusions about any other strings, mine or otherwise.
Being able to detect randomness is interesting, but I was kind of expecting a claim that Designed could be distinguished from evolved. Isn’t that the holy grail of ID?
Or have we moved on?
Now, I could see some monetary value in predicting market trends. Particularly if the trends are the result of programmed trading. That would be like card counters gambling with other card counters.
But I don’t believe that is a useful model of evolution.
For dictionaries they are (fairly) synonymous. Dictionary.com includes “to make known” in the definition of both of them.
I am not asking you to clarify this. Just pointing out to you the fact that you hardly make any sense.
keiths:
Erik:
Well, Dembski’s writings are a contradictory mess, as you’ve probably noticed, but I’m going by what Dembski wrote when he introduced the Explanatory Filter:
You can bet that the justices didn’t calculate the specified complexity and compare it to a 500-bit threshold. 🙂
They rejected law, and they rejected chance, and that’s the EF, according to Dembski.
fifth,
You’re still not dealing with the resolution problem.
In the “line chart game”, you are plotting data strings and visually comparing them to randomly modified copies.
If you zoom in, you will always be able to spot the differences. You will infer design, even when the original string is not designed.
If you zoom way out, you won’t be able to spot the differences — if you zoom out far enough, the strings will reduce to single pixels. You will fail to infer design even when the original string is designed.
That’s what I mean when I say that you will be inundated with false positives and false negatives.
It’s a fatal problem unless you can 1) justify a specific resolution as the “right” one, and 2) show that at that resolution, designed strings are always distinguishable from randomly-modified copies, while undesigned strings are not.
There is no reason to think there is any such resolution.
I bet a halfway decent GA could learn to fool the game players. Or fool FMM’s method. I’d bet a fair amount of money on that.
We have, for example learned to record music with a large percentage of the information removed, and in double blind tests, people are unable to distinguish the truncated music from the original. This has nothing to do with data compression. It involves removal of information.
I’m still waiting to hear whether FMM claims the ability to distinguish Design from evolution.
petrushka:
You don’t even need the GA. Any finite, undesigned string will fool fifth’s method if you zoom in to the point where human observers can detect the difference between it and a randomly modified copy. There is always such a point, unless the observer is blind.
I am thinking you could learn to fool his method regardless of how sophisticated it is or how the resolution is optimized.
It’s similar to inventing drug resistance.
But it could make an interesting red queen scenario.
There’s a simple logical logical flaw in The Method.
A truly random process of generation (whether god’s random or just really good pseudo-random) will output every possible finite string.
Game over.
ETA:
A decent GA can learn to output strings having whatever characteristics are required to fool The Method.
The Method simply serves as a selector.
OMagain
My EA is pretty rudimentary and 5000 is a lot of characters `so I’m not up to 80% R squared yet. I’m working on it every chance I get.
stay tuned
Peace
petrushka,
Yes. I pointed that out way back on May 18th…
…but fifth glossed over it.
keiths says,
I think the resolution issue is a net plus for my method.
It allows fundis like me to hold that we will find design if we only look closely enough and at the same time it allows godless heathens like you to claim that what is apparently design at a particular resolution will turn out to be algorithmic after all if we look just closer.
It will move the hard god questions out of the practical picture and allow us come to an agreement about design at particular resolution that we are looking at.
Besides resolution is already a concept we use in Biology. When we say variation is random we mean it is random with respect to fitness. That is a statement about the resolution of the randomness with respect to the structure we are looking at.
peace
fifth,
Your method completely fails to do what it was intended to do — distinguish design from non-design — and you regard that as “a net plus”?
I don’t think even a Fox News viewer would fall for that sort of spin.
Any sufficiently long thread will produce every possible response, at least twice.
petrushka says,
I say,
Are we back to produce verses explain conversation again? Any card shuffler if given enough time will produce two royal flushes.
But If in the middle of a high stakes game I’m dealt two royal flush’s my opponents probably will not be satisfied with that as an explanation.
peace
So what?
petrushka,
And more, at this rate. 🙂
Is it Groundhog Day?
Keiths says,
I say
I believe my method does exactly what it was intended to do which is distinguish design from non-design at any given resolution. I’m putting that hypothesis to the test right now with OMagain and Patrick’s strings.
There is an ocean of difference between absolute certainty and practical certainty, If you want absolute certainty you have moved beyond science. You are free to bark up that tree to your hearts content just don’t expect scientific backing to your speculation.
My method looks more to the practical
peace
fifth,
You’re missing the implication. You wrote:
What petrushka and I are pointing out is that every finite string can be explained by a random process. Therefore, by your statement above, you are never justified in inferring design.
petrushka says.
I say
Once again targets are where the action is. Things like Birds, the immune system and the Cambrian explosion.
They are what we are want explained.
Pointing out that a truly random process of generation will output these things is irrelevant and vacuous when it comes to explanation.
If everything is possible science is impossible.
Besides that there is no way to ever prove that a “truly random process of generation” is even possible.
Talk about an “angels on the head of a pin” discussion
peace
Keiths says,
Not according to the operational definition of explain we are using. Or any other common sense definition of explain that I can think of
peace
fifth,
No, it doesn’t. I’ve already explained why.
At a sufficiently fine resolution your method will infer design for every string, whether designed or not.
At a sufficiently coarse resolution your method will fail to infer design for every string, whether designed or not.
You can’t explain how to choose the “correct” resolution, and there’s no reason to believe that such a resolution even exists.
Your method is completely impractical. It cannot be used to reliably infer design, though that is its entire purpose.
Keiths says,
I say,
Sure I can, the correct resolution is the resolution you have.
You go with what you got. If you have more than one resolution you start with the easiest and work your way through the rest as you can.
In science you don’t throw your hands up and give up if you have incomplete information. You come to tentative conclusions and adjust them as more information becomes available.
peace
fifth,
When you’re viewing line charts, all of the resolutions are available to you. Software can zoom in and out.
At one resolution your method will say that a given string is designed. At another resolution it will say that the same string isn’t designed. The user has no way to figure out which is correct, or even which is more likely.
Where’s the value? Why should a user bother with your method if after using it, she still has no idea whether the string in question is designed or not?
Keiths says,
I say,
You really need to try it yourself. It would make this conversation easier.
Zooming is not the kind of change in resolution I’m talking about. When I say a string is effectively random at particular resolution. I mean a particular measurement resolution. One measurement per inch verses one measurement per millimeter for example.
When I zoom in on a chart all I’m doing is looking at fewer data points at a time I’m not changing the resolution at all. If I want to change a resolution I need to take more measurements. The correct resolution is the one you have.
peace
fifth,
You’re forgetting that the strings don’t have to be strings of measurements. Your canonical examples are pi and a Shakespearean sonnet, remember?
fifthmonarchyman,
Earlier in our discussion you agreed with me that randomly changing 20% of the characters in the string achieved the same goal, correct? That’s a pretty fast operation.
What is the specific algorithm of your “EA”, if you don’t mind sharing?
fifthmonarchyman,
Those aren’t targets. Evolution does not have targets.
Patrick says,
quote:
By “target,” we do not mean something for which the search is actively looking. Recall that the only requirement of the search is that it be representable as a probability distribution. The target plays no role in what constitutes a search; rather, the target only features in the context of measuring the active information in a search. The target is effectively the measuring stick. The choice of target is arbitrary, and I could have as easily chosen cities, paintings, beetles, cows, volcanoes, mountains, lakes, or crystals. The same conclusion applies to all of them: they show up far more often than chance would lead us to expect.
end quote:
Winston Ewert
peace
Patrick says,
I say,
I might of said that but it feels a little like cheating. The point of the exercise is to see if I can distinguish the original string from a algorithmically produced string that is close to it.
It’s just a formula in excel I create 10 copies of the random string while varying about .01% the digiots randomly by 10% . I then take the copy with the highest R sq and repeat
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Modifying 20% of the characters in a string at random does result in an “algorithmically produced” string.
This is just a very slow way of achieving exactly the same mathematical result.
fifthmonarchyman,
I didn’t realize you were also incorporating the “active information” (which is neither) concepts into your argument. If we keep going down this path I’m going to have to ask for a definition of “is”. There’s a former president who can help you with that.
Keiths says,
I say,
You can numerically represent each letter of the Sonnet or each word or each line. You could represent every third letter if you wanted to. There are tons of ways to represent a sonnet as a numerical string. Depending on what feature you wanted to look at and your available resources
That is what I mean by resolution.
The same goes for the digiots of Pi
peace