On Uncommon Descent, poster gpuccio has been discussing “functional information”. Most of gpuccio’s argument is a conventional “islands of function” argument. Not being very knowledgeable about biochemistry, I’ll happily leave that argument to others.
But I have been intrigued by gpuccio’s use of Functional Information, in particular gpuccio’s assertion that if we observe 500 bits of it, that this is a reliable indicator of Design, as here, about at the 11th sentence of point (a):
… the idea is that if we observe any object that exhibits complex functional information (for example, more than 500 bits of functional information ) for an explicitly defined function (whatever it is) we can safely infer design.
I wonder how this general method works. As far as I can see, it doesn’t work. There would be seem to be three possible ways of arguing for it, and in the end; two don’t work and one is just plain silly. Which of these is the basis for gpuccio’s statement? Let’s investigate …
A quick summary
Let me list the three ways, briefly.
(1) The first is the argument using William Dembski’s (2002) Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information. I have argued (2007) that this is formulated in such a way as to compare apples to oranges, and thus is not able to reject normal evolutionary processes as explanations for the “complex” functional information. In any case, I see little sign that gpuccio is using the LCCSI.
(2) The second is the argument that the functional information indicates that only an extremely small fraction of genotypes have the desired function, and the rest are all alike in totally lacking any of this function. This would prevent natural selection from following any path of increasing fitness to the function, and the rareness of the genotypes that have nonzero function would prevent mutational processes from finding them. This is, as far as I can tell, gpuccio’s islands-of-function argument. If such cases can be found, then explaining them by natural evolutionary processes would indeed be difficult. That is gpuccio’s main argument, and I leave it to others to argue with its application in the cases where gpuccio uses it. I am concerned here, not with the islands-of-function argument itself, but with whether the design inference from 500 bits of functional information is generally valid.
We are asking here whether, in general, observation of more than 500 bits of functional information is “a reliable indicator of design”. And gpuccio’s definition of functional information is not confined to cases of islands of function, but also includes cases where there would be a path to along which function increases. In such cases, seeing 500 bits of functional information, we cannot conclude from this that it is extremely unlikely to have arisen by normal evolutionary processes. So the general rule that gpuccio gives fails, as it is not reliable.
(3) The third possibility is an additional condition that is added to the design inference. It simply declares that unless the set of genotypes is effectively unreachable by normal evolutionary processes, we don’t call the pattern “complex functional information”. It does not simply define “complex functional information” as a case where we can define a level of function that makes probability of the set less than 
. That additional condition allows us to safely conclude that normal evolutionary forces can be dismissed — by definition. But it leaves the reader to do the heavy lifting, as the reader has to determine that the set of genotypes has an extremely low probability of being reached. And once they have done that, they will find that the additional step of concluding that the genotypes have “complex functional information” adds nothing to our knowledge. CFI becomes a useless add-on that sounds deep and mysterious but actually tells you nothing except what you already know. So CFI becomes useless. And there seems to be some indication that gpuccio does use this additional condition.
Let us go over these three possibilities in some detail. First, what is the connection of gpuccio’s “functional information” to Jack Szostak’s quantity of the same name?
Is gpuccio’s Functional Information the same as Szostak’s Functional Information?
gpuccio acknowledges that gpuccio’s definition of Functional Information is closely connected to Jack Szostak’s definition of it. gpuccio notes here:
Please, not[e] the definition of functional information as:
“the fraction of all possible configurations of the system that possess a degree of function >=
Ex.”which is identical to my definition, in particular my definition of functional information as the
upper tail of the observed function, that was so much criticized by DNA_Jock.
(I have corrected gpuccio’s typo of “not” to “note”, JF)
We shall see later that there may be some ways in which gpuccio’s definition
is modified from Szostak’s. Jack Szostak and his co-authors never attempted any use of his definition to infer Design. Nor did Leslie Orgel, whose Specified Information (in his 1973 book The Origins of Life) preceded Szostak’s. So the part about design inference must come from somewhere else.
gpuccio seems to be making one of three possible arguments;
Possibility #1 That there is some mathematical theorem that proves that ordinary evolutionary processes cannot result in an adaptation that has 500 bits of Functional Information.
Use of such a theorem was attempted by William Dembski, his Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information, explained in Dembski’s book No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (2001). But Dembski’s LCCSI theorem did not do what Dembski needed it to do. I have explained why in my own article on Dembski’s arguments (here). Dembski’s LCCSI changed the specification before and after evolutionary processes, and so he was comparing apples to oranges.
In any case, as far as I can see gpuccio has not attempted to derive gpuccio’s argument from Dembski’s, and gpuccio has not directly invoked the LCCSI, or provided a theorem to replace it. gpuccio said in a response to a comment of mine at TSZ,
Look, I will not enter the specifics of your criticism to Dembski. I agre with Dembski in most things, but not in all, and my arguments are however more focused on empirical science and in particular biology.
While thus disclaiming that the argument is Dembski’s, on the other hand gpuccio does associate the argument with Dembski here by saying that
Of course, Dembski, Abel, Durston and many others are the absolute references for any discussion about functional information. I think and hope that my ideas are absolutely derived from theirs. My only purpose is to detail some aspects of the problem.
and by saying elsewhere that
No generation of more than 500 bits has ever been observed to arise in a non design system (as you know, this is the fundamental idea in ID).
That figure being Dembski’s, this leaves it unclear whether gpuccio is or is not basing the argument on Dembski’s. But gpuccio does not directly invoke the LCCSI, or try to come up with some mathematical theorem that replaces it.
So possibility #1 can be safely ruled out.
Possibility #2. That the target region in the computation of Functional Information consists of all of the sequences that have nonzero function, while all other sequences have zero function. As there is no function elsewhere, natural selection for this function then cannot favor sequences closer and closer to the target region.
Such cases are possible, and usually gpuccio is talking about cases like this. But gpuccio does not require them in order to have Functional Information. gpuccio does not rule out that the region could be defined by a high level of function, with lower levels of function in sequences outside of the region, so that there could be paths allowing evolution to reach the target region of sequences.
An example in which gpuccio recognizes that lower levels of function can exist outside the target region is found here, where gpuccio is discussing natural and artificial selection:
Then you can ask: why have I spent a lot of time discussing how NS (and AS) can in some cases add some functional information to a sequence (see my posts #284, #285 and #287)
There is a very good reason for that, IMO.
I am arguing that:
1) It is possible for NS to add some functional information to a sequence, in a few very specific cases, but:
2) Those cases are extremely rare exceptions, with very specific features, and:
3) If we understand well what are the feature that allow, in those exceptional cases, those limited “successes” of NS, we can easily demonstrate that:
4) Because of those same features that allow the intervention of NS, those scenarios can never, never be steps to complex functional information.
Jack Szostak defined functional information by having us define a cutoff level of function to define a set of sequences that had function greater than that, without any condition that the other sequences had zero function. Neither did Durston. And as we’ve seen gpuccio associates his argument with theirs.
So this second possibility could not be the source of gpuccio’s general assertion about 500 bits of functional information being a reliable indicator of design, however much gpuccio concentrates on such cases.
Possibility #3. That there is an additional condition in gpuccio’s Functional Information, one that does not allow us to declare it to be present if there is a way for evolutionary processes to achieve that high a level of function. In short, if we see 500 bits of Szostak’s functional information, and if it can be put into the genome by natural evolutionary processes such as natural selection then for that reason we declare that it is not really Functional Information. If gpuccio is doing this, then gpuccio’s Functional Information is really a very different animal than Szostak’s functional information.
Is gpuccio doing that? gpuccio does associate his argument with William Dembski’s, at least in some of his statements. And William Dembski has defined his Complex Specified Information in this way, adding the condition that it is not really CSI unless it is sufficiently improbable that it be achieved by natural evolutionary forces (see my discussion of this here in the section on “Dembski’s revised CSI argument” that refer to Dembski’s statements here). And Dembski’s added condition renders use of his CSI a useless afterthought to the design inference.
gpuccio does seem to be making a similar condition. Dembski’s added condition comes in via the calculation of the “probability” of each genotype. In Szostak’s definition, the probabilities of sequences are simply their frequencies among all possible sequences, with each being counted equally. In Dembski’s CSI calculation, we are instead supposed to compute the probability of the sequence given all evolutionary processes, including natural selection.
gpuccio has a similar condition in the requirements for concluding that complex
functional information is present: We can see it at step (6) here:
If our conclusion is yes, we must still do one thing. We observe carefully the object and what we know of the system, and we ask if there is any known and credible algorithmic explanation of the sequence in that system. Usually, that is easily done by excluding regularity, which is easily done for functional specification. However, as in the particular case of functional proteins a special algorithm has been proposed, neo darwininism, which is intended to explain non regular functional sequences by a mix of chance and regularity, for this special case we must show that such an explanation is not credible, and that it is not supported by facts. That is a part which I have not yet discussed in detail here. The necessity part of the algorithm (NS) is not analyzed by dFSCI alone, but by other approaches and considerations. dFSCI is essential to evaluate the random part of the algorithm (RV). However, the short conclusion is that neo darwinism is not a known and credible algorithm which can explain the origin of even one protein superfamily. It is neither known nor credible. And I am not aware of any other algorithm ever proposed to explain (without design) the origin of functional, non regular sequences.
In other words, you, the user of the concept, are on your own. You have to rule out that natural selection (and other evolutionary processes) could reach the target sequences. And once you have ruled it out, you have no real need for the declaration that complex functional information is present.
I have gone on long enough. I conclude that the rule that observation of 500 bits of functional information is present allows us to conclude in favor of Design (or at any rate, to rule out normal evolutionary processes as the source of the adaptation) is simply nonexistent. Or if it does exist, it is as a useless add-on to an argument that draws that conclusion for some other reason, leaving the really hard work to the user.
Let’s end by asking gpuccio some questions:
1. Is your “functional information” the same as Szostak’s?
2. Or does it add the requirement that there be no function in sequences that
are outside of the target set?
3. Does it also require us to compute the probability that the sequence arises as a result of normal evolutionary processes?
OMagain,
So you’re claiming that the C language created out of bell labs was not FI created from scratch. Show me where the symbols and syntax had been used before.
OMagain,
The argument for the origin of novel FI is based on evidence of conscious intelligence.
If you need to invoke logical fallacies to support your arguments I understand.
Entropy,
All the evidence exists inside our cells. 4 ^ 3 coded scheme that translates to 20 ^ L coded proteins. The null hypothesis fails to explain the origin of this and all the follow on FI that is observed across the diversity of life.
I continue to think your arguments are interesting but they vanish when we take away the materialist umbrella they live under.
There are many hypotheses for the origin of the genetic code and the translation system. But even disregarding those, that just leaves us without an explanation.
We’ve been over this, but in order to explain the genetic code and translation system on design, you have to actually explain something. Why only 20 amino acids? Why these particular ones? Why L-amino acids and D-sugars? Why this code and not another among 10^84 possible codes with a similar block structure?
Why translation from RNA instead of directly from DNA? Why use a ribozyme to catalyze peptide bond formation when protein can do it?
Let’s see it, the design explanation for the genetic code and translation system. One that actually explains why we see what we see.
Calculate the FI for C, why don’t ya.
Did you realize that Mozart wrote his music using “symbols and syntax” that already existed and decide to change the argument? Sure seems like it.
Are you sure you want to make this argument? Think about it’s relevance to biology….
It’s not about if the symbols and syntax existed before or not (if they did you could hardly invent C could you, it would already exist). It’s about if the symbols and syntax were created “from scratch”. Remember?
But sure, you’ve actually picked a good example. The precursors to the symbols and syntax used in C were used in B:
If you even knew a little you’d not make these arguments.
And as noted, everything had a precursor, nothing was created ex nihilo. Conscious intelligence is therefore ruled out as a candidate for the creation of FI in biology, as it itself needs biology and biology needs FI. Catch 22.
Feel free to point out the logical fallacy and explain it. Just saying that I’ve done it is about as convincing as, well, any other argument you’ve ever made.
Why are you not winning then?
Is this C or B colewd?
fool
Exactly. What makes that particular configuration designed? I think the reason they shy away from addressing this is the same reason colewd never answered my question about “control”. He said that finding out that some system was controlled by some other system led him to ID. I asked if there was anything that he could have found out that would have not led him to ID and he simply ignores the question.
I suppose the “conscious intelligence” argument hinges on there being a “conscious intelligence” observed that could actually have done it?
As noted (multiple times) such a being would have to live for billions of years, not need to use trial and error for e.g. protein folding. Would need to remember everything. It would need to be able to create systems of complexity we cannot ever hope to unpick, i.e. BA77’s multiple code layers that can be read back and forwards, upsidedown etc etc.
Personally I’ve never observed such a conscious intelligence. But colewd is utterly convinced “conscious intelligence” explains biology.
If this “conscious intelligence” is not “god”, colewd, what is it? What makes you think it even exists?
Also do you think it’s deceptive to label this billions of years old being with “conscious intelligence” when the only “conscious intelligence” we are aware of is us, and we’re utterly unlike the being described above?
To conflate the two things seems utterly dishonest.
Yes, I did. The “from scratch” addition was a rather transparant attempt of yours to define evolutionary mechanisms away. You just made it up on the spot. It sure isn’t present in the Hazen-Szostak definition we’ve been using.
Moi? Excuse me? Did you not accept gpuccio’s premise that the human proteins he was presenting as evidence had homologs in non-human species? Does that not imply that the human copies must have resulted from the modification of ancestral sequences? Was it not you that told us that FI had to be created “from scratch”, meaning that the resulting sequences were not allowed to require the pre existence of another sequence? And now suddenly I am the one that flushed gpuccio’s information jumps down the privy?
Sorry buddy, but this is your own hole. By all means, keep on digging, but don’t blame me for it.
Please let me know if he ever supports that claim.
I believe that is gpuccio’s position. He accepts common descent, and descent with modification, just that certain modifications require design.
That is the way I understood it as well. But gpuccio allows that mutations can occasionally increase the FI of a protein sequence. Bill does not.
As a theistic evolutionist how do you explain the origin of FI?
And why are you so concerned with my claims when you are talking to someone utterly unable to support theirs?
You pretend that you are just trying to get everyone on the same page, then you say that, showing what side you are on really.
As a TE you must realize that is the most unsupported of all the positions? It’s literally belief and nothing else but you accept everything science has to say about evolution and add a little bit extra on to salve your fear of oblivion.
Just another coward.
As a TE, that’s presumably also your position? As such, in your opinion, where does FI come from?
Will you support the claim that you are making (in the same way I am making the claim you are asking me to support) that the designer is the source of FI?
On the one hand we have a mechanism that can (according to gpuccio) create small amounts of FI. On the other we have a mechanism that cannot be described, we don’t know when or how it acts and it’s supporters refuse to go into any detail about how they know what they must know to be a supporter in the first place.
And yet you are asking if I’m ever going to support my claim?
My claim is supported by being science’s answer to the diversity of life. Descent with variation. I consider my claim fully supported by all of our current understanding of biology, incomplete as it is.
The body of evidence that supports my claim starts with Darwin’s masterwork and continues in every lab in every university.
But, you a TE, you consider my claim unsupported?
Then why are you a TE at all Mung? Or was that just another convenient half-truth told to suit whatever audience you were talking to at the time?
Why are you a Theistic Evolutionist if you don’t think evolution could-a-done-it? Why not just be another mindless theist who thinks that god did it all 6000 years ago? It’d be easier! Less science to pretend to understand for a start…
don’t worry colewd, this page will scroll into the past soon enough and you can pretend you did not make a total fool of yourself with regard to the precursor of “C”. And Mung can continue to cherry-pick his quote mining ammunition and ignore the elephants tromping around the room as he pretends to be even handed.
One last thing. colewd, it’d probably be best if you thrash out with gpuccio if FI can be increased by evolution or not before carrying on.
Unless you want to start a new OP with colewd-FI instead of gpuccio-FI? Then we can chalk up another FIASCO metric and have a treble!
I thought this was a self evident fact about OMagain on this blog?
All of that, however ill-described, is physical and natural Bill. So, sorry, but the existence of something physical and natural doesn’t look a lot like evidence for the existence of non-natural stuff (whatever that might be). You need to show me something non-natural. Please start by explaining what that could be like.
Of course it fails Bill. The null hypothesis is that what we observe is purely random. Of course that’s false, therefore there’s something else going on. We know what that is: energy flow, physical chemical phenomena, a pinch of randomness still, historical constraints. That you refuse, or are unable, to understand it is no justification to buy into a foundationally nonsensical position like ID.
If ID is going to be called scientific, then it has to comply with the rules. If it cannot do it, then it has to confess of being religious arguments trying to pass for science. I’d be very happy to see something that honest coming out of the ID creationist crowd, but I doubt that they’re about to start being honest all of a sudden.
So, how do you get, honestly, philosophically and scientifically, beyond the physical Bill? Why should we consider such a thing? Why not allow for “I don’t know” when something is not known, instead of jumping into the indefensible religious bandwagon?
Entropy,
Entropy,
Have you heard that organizations dependent of Darwinian Theory (the funding for “research) actually hire people to defend (Darwinian) evolution online?
OMagain:
The cute thing is that Bill actually seems to think of himself as a computer person.
As are you… 😉
Corneel,
It wasn’t me. Maybe it was from OMagains collection of straw-men 🙂
Mung,
As you see he pivoted but he did support the claim that humans have never created FI from scratch with “Mozart sometimes copies music from other people” and “there was a pre cursor to the C computer language called B” 🙂
Entropy,
How can you boil this down to a cause? It sounds like a dinner recipe we could share over a bottle of wine 🙂
Mung, to DNA_Jock:
Actually, you usually do try to hide it. It’s just that you fail.
I’d much prefer if you were less defensive and more willing to admit what you don’t know. There are plenty of people here who are willing to teach.
By understanding what it means Bill. But, as I already said, that you either refuse or are unable to understand it is no justification to go for a nonsensical position like ID. If we just go through the logical steps, we’re left with the obvious source of all the FI: natural phenomena. It doesn’t matter if we know which or how. The logic is inescapable.
We are deeply dependent on natural phenomena just to be able to be. Therefore nature is first regardless of our ignorance (or wisdom) about how exactly it works, and/or about how exactly it happened.
That too. 🙂
Entropy,
I do think your arguments are interesting. I am not sure about the negative evolutionist claim of “God of the gaps” but if it is problematic you are making a “naturalism of the gaps claim.” I am not judging it but until you can clearly articulate a mechanistic cause thats where you are. I think what you are saying that it could be X or Y or Z or some combination is a credible argument. This is an argument I have also seen Joe make around energy as a cause. I don’t think the claim that natural selection with mutation can create sufficient FI for life’s diversity is believable.
I agree the ID claim has issues as does your argument the issues are just different. I don’t agree with the hard wall you are building around naturalism and think you should reconsider as it is cutting off thought and discussion.
Your honesty is as great as your knowledge and ability colewd. I’m done with you.
Unfortunately it takes two to learn, and a coward like colewd will die before admitting he’s learnt something.
Naughty boy. No it was you allright:
There. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Descent with modification is tossed out of the window and only de novo creation of sequences (*poof*) counts.
Even you yourself argued at one point that the Designer re-uses certain motifs (common design, remember? oopsie) and now every novel protein needs to be completely independent from other existing protein sequences or it can’t be said to have functional information. That rules out evolutionary mechanisms allright, but you sure have painted yourself in a corner that way.
Billy is incapable of learning anything to begin with
Trump is busy loading the Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary with right wing ideologues. Betsy De Vos is running education.
Why the need to be so hard on Bill and his minority position?
ID is no longer needed or useful.
Trump and his born again supporters have performed an end run.
There’s a profound difference Bill. You cannot point me to a god, I don’t even need to point you to nature. Nature is right here. The god-of-the-gaps fallacy is a fallacy because it doesn’t really answer anything, because it doesn’t start from a position of knowledge, but of ignorance, to conclude that some being, that nobody can actually point to, did it. So, not the same, even if we didn’t know how natural phenomena produced FI, pointing to nature as the source is not fallacious. It’s the only sensical position.
So, again, if we didn’t know how, just by following the logic, we’d be left with nature. But, also again, we do understand how, you are just excessively skeptical about it, or you don’t understand. Joe gave you an explanation. I gave you one in more generic terms. However, just following the logic should allow you to understand that there’s nothing wrong with thinking that evolution can and has produced FI a plenty.
As I said, I’ll reconsider as evidence allows. But so far, the poor philosophical grounds of ID are a clear warning sign to me. It yells of double standards and irrationality. In ID, the imaginary wins by default, while natural phenomena, even phenomena that we do understand, are treated with extreme skepticism, disdain and even mockery. Sorry, I cannot operate in such an irrational way.
Easy there, old man.
Corneel,
Corneel
Bill
So tell me how you equated these two very different statements which lead you to misrepresent my claim?
Entropy,
We never know in science it is always tentative. In this case you are declaring nature the winner without weighing the evidence. A nature of the “gaps” argument.
Entropy,
I am skeptical because you can’t identify a viable mechanism that can produce what we are observing. I give you credit that you are admitting that you don’t have one. You are assuming given time you will have a natural solution. I think it is rational to be skeptical of this assumption given the difficulty of the problem to be solved.
The only known cause of FI is conscious intelligence and as far as we know it appeared in nature well after life’s origin. This is a fascinating puzzle 🙂
I never admitted such a thing. I said that it seems hard to get you to either understand or accept them.
There’s a solution already. However, I don’t expect to have explanations for everything. That would be too presumptuous. We’re products of a huge universe, and a huge assortment of physical/chemical phenomena. We’re tiny by comparison to those phenomena. Thus, I cannot expect to get answers for everything. But this FI thing is too easy. Perhaps only hard to explain in laypeople terms, more importantly if the laypeople prefer not to understand.
It’s ok to be skeptical about some explanation, of course. But it’s not rational to be excessively skeptical about them, while being excessively naive about ID. More importantly because ID relies on faulty philosophy. So, why that skeptical about nature, while naive about ID?
This is patently false. We see it arising all the time all around us. You keep forgetting that we ourselves contain lots of FI that arose all by itself. Nobody has found tiny people building the FI in any life form so far. You’re assuming your conclusion Bill. I’m just pointing to the obvious. FI first, intelligence is dependent on FI. Thus intelligence cannot be the “cause” of FI. Quite the contrary, FI would be the “cause” of intelligence. Cart-before-the-horse.
Now, if only we were able to explain to you that FI is but a subset of more generic energy flows and physical arrangements, then you’d also understand that the arising of FI is no big deal for natural phenomena. You’d see it in “non-living” phenomena as well. But that might be too much to ask.
If only you were one of them.
Oh cripes, they really are very different aren’t they?
No sorry, you lost me there. So functional information is created “from scratch” when some sequence did not require a pre existing sequence, but …it was allowed to have one anyway?
Not clear.
Look around you. Everything you see is non-natural. So now you know what that could be like.
Why on earth is that the null hypothesis? It’s obviously false. I’m going to set as my null hypothesis something I know to be utterly untrue. How much sense does that make?
Entropy,
A classic chicken and egg scenario. Just as it takes proteins to mass produce amino acids. Glad you surfaced this.
Yeah, I’m trying to think of a symbol used in C that did not already pre-exist the C language. My first thought on that was that any symbol they used would have to be one that they could type, which of course would mean the symbol already existed.
Corneel,
Clear your head, re read my claim, understand what it is, and fight the temptation to change it and argue against yourself 🙂
I don’t see how that rules out all evolutionary mechanisms, assuming that’s what you meant.
Mung,
Point well taken. At the end of the day my bet would be that the origin of the typed symbols would come after origin of life 🙂
LoL. In evolution, the imaginary wins by default. One need only imagine how an eye might evolve. Therefore, eyes can evolve. Many times.