29th Oct: I have offered a response to Gpuccio’s challenge below.
I think this is worth a new post.
Gpuccio has issued a challenge here and here. I have repeated the essential text below. Others may wish to try it and/or seek their own clarifications. Could be interesting. Something tells me that it is not going to end up in a clear cut result. But it may clarify the deeply confusing world of dFSCI.
Challenge:
Give me any number of strings of which you know for certain the origin. I will assess dFSCI in my way. If I give you a false positive, I lose. I will accept strings of a predetermined length (we can decide), so that at least the search space is fixed.
Conditions:
a) I would say binary strings of 500bits. Or language strings of 150 characters. Or decimal strings of 150 digits. Something like that. Even a mix of them would be fine.
No problem with that.
b) I will literally apply my procedure. If I cannot easily see any function for the string, I will not go on in the evaluation, and I will not infer design. If you, or any other, wants to submit strings whose function you know, you are free to tell me what the function is, and I will evaluate it thoroughly.
That’s OK. I will supply the function in each case. I note that when I tried to define function precisely you said that the function can be anything the observer wishes provided it is objectively defined, so, for example, “adds up to 1000” would be a function. So I don’t think that’s going to be an issue!
c) I will be cautious, and I will not infer design if I have doubts about any of the points in the procedure.
I am not happy with this. If the string meets the criteria for dFSCI you should be able to able to infer design. You can’t pick and choose when to apply it. At the very least you must prove that the string does not have dFSCI if you are going to avoid inferring design.
d) Ah, and please don’t submit strings outputted by an algorithm, unless you are ready to consider them as designed if the algorithm is more than 150 bits long. We should anyway agree, before we start, on which type of system and what time span we are testing.
I don’t understand this – a necessity system for generating digital strings can always be expressed as an algorithm e.g Fibonacci series. Otherwise it is just a copy of the string. Also it is not clear how to define how many bits long an algorithm is. Maybe it will suffice if I confine myself to algorithms that can be expressed mathematically in less than 20 symbols?
And anyway, I am afraid we have to wait next week for the test. My time is almost finished.
That’s OK. I need time to think anyway. But also I need to get your clarification on b,c and d.
Isn’t that enough? 🙂
If it doesn’t matter to you, why should it matter to us? 🙂
Lurkers and readers need to see for themselves that ID doesn’t belong in our schools.
If we didn’t “debate” you, there are people who might be misled into thinking ID has some sort of scientific merit when in reality, it is simply an attempt by religion to get Genesis and the rest of a literal Bible in front of school children.
A computer program is a “necessity mechanism” and thus your resultant string, regardless of its content, does not have “dFSCI” according to gpuccio.
This means there is no reason to describe what your string’s functionality actually is, as the mere fact of its origin is enough to preclude “dFSCI”.
What about the output from a compiler?
While it can be considered data, it is actually running code and thus very specific, very complex, very functional and literally digital.
This is the problem I see with all fundamentalists, i.e. things are either black or they are white.
This is not something students should be taught in schools as everything we study has to be done within some scope, within some context.
That is why ID and gpuccio’s “dFSCI” are useless as scientific tools.
But it’s a question I’m asking your side to answer! 🙂
gpuccio either considers “dFSCI” to be independent of its source or he doesn’t.
Does your side know how your term “dFSCI”, applies to a string?
Same as your second string and any other you generate with a computer program, (i.e. a “necessity mechanism”), that they don’t have “dFSCI”.
Ask gpuccio why he won’t allow that.
The whole point of my asking a question is to get your answer. 🙂
If you can’t answer it, pass it on to gpuccio.
Your claim was that “data” strings are distinct from “functional” strings but that doesn’t apply to compiler OR interpreter output.
While a compiler’s output is object code, an interpreter’s output is a string of “tokens”, which doesn’t change the fact that we have a “data” output string which at the same time, is a “functional” string.
No, I want you to show me how the “designer” makes changes.
The whole position of ID is that “evolution” is designer driven.
Show me from the perspective of the “designer”, how I change the semiotic codes in living cells.
I don’t mean cloning the way humans did it with “Dolly”, but actual on-line changes of the type a “designer” would have to make to fine-tune a living organism.
How would the designer reach into our bodies to make changes in eggs or sperm cells while we are alive?
That is not an answer, that’s a question! 🙂
That doesn’t save you from “gpuccio’s law”.
Any string that is a result of a “necessity mechanism”, such as a computer program, does NOT contain “dFSCI”.
That means you are going to have to manually put together any string that you wish to assert “dFSCI” for.
It also means the “intelligent designer” of life is also forbidden from using computers as the resulting life-forms would NOT have “dFSCI” and therefore would not be considered as “designed” by gpuccio.
No, it means “Please don’t make me put “scary quotes” around everything I write.” 🙂
Since I am on the “other side”, I don’t accept that living cells have “semiotic codes” in the way UBP claims.
We humans describe things with labels however, but they are descriptive and their source is us.
This still leaves you with the question of how the designer would change “semiotic codes” in the cells of a living body.
If “necessity mechanisms” are NOT a source of “dFSCI”, as per gpuccio, then anyone one who uses them has NOT generated “dFSCI”, regardless of whether that user is the “intelligent designer” or us.
Computer programs are “necessity mechanisms”.
OMG! 🙂
We are not talking about Dolly here or modifying corn but rather what ID claims is the mechanism by which the “intelligent designer”, fine-tunes life.
Yes, I claim it cannot be done but IDists claim it can, so they, meaning you and gpuccio, should be able to show us how you can walk up to a living creature, extract egg or sperm cells and load new “dFSCI” to implement a change in the following generation.
Would the designer need to take complete populations into a lab and make the changes all at once?
Does he operate only on “Adam/Eve couples”?
If only “Adam/Eve”, what happens if their immediate children get eaten by prey?
Does he have to do it again with another pair?
How does he monitor the success of his modifications?
Why would he make the change at all?
Does he know the future environment will change and thus the changes are required or does he make the change first and then “fine-tune” the environment?
And can he use that mechanism to stop giving us cancer? Pretty please?
Toronto,
The designer doesn’t ‘reach’ into our bodies.
The designer is already there. You could possibly wrap this idea around your brain if you saw force and information as cognitive entities.
They must be as they are at the foundation of existence.
Riddle solved.
Ghost in the machine?
To my question:
I am still wondering what gpuccio would have us do when a sequence is designated as having dFCSI because there is not a sufficiently detailed explanation of it by RV+NS, but later such a detailed explanation is found.
(1) Would gpuccio then concede that dFCSI is not a good indicator of Design?
gpuccio has now answered (and says this was previously answered many times):
Yes
Thanks to gpuccio for clarifying that.
That leaves us in the position where if there is enough complexity in a molecular sequence, and some function, and not a precise account of chains of intermediates from other known sequences, with high enough fitnesses of those intermediates, then gpuccio will declare the sequence to have dFCSI.
Even if the lack of a precise account is simply because no one has yet studied the case.
gpuccio also has stated that it is an empirical fact that
in all such cases there turns out to have been design, and no exceptions are known.
I think that this makes it almost inevitable that the argument will fail, since sooner or later someone will study one of these unstudied cases and find a plausible nondesign pathway.
gpuccio will not make such declarations of presence of dFCSI in the case of phenotypes other than sequences because gpuccio says that in such cases
the molecular basis for that, when known, is always very simple.
gpuccio does not accept attempts to check his argument by seeing whether it works for CSI that is put into the genome in a Genetic Algorithm (and I think by extension also seeing whether mathematical equations can be produced showing that this can happen).
gpuccio’s argument there I find particularly unconvincing — that dFCSI is already present in the machinery in the GA that allows the genotypes to reproduce. gpuccio does not show that this FCSI gets transferred into the simulated genotypes in the GA. In fact the GAs used are precisely designed by us to simulate a process that does not have design, and gpuccio does not acknowledge that.
So we have a criterion that I think no one here at TSZ knows how to apply, and which is extremely vulnerable to disproof by simply having someone investigate one case further and find intermediates. And is not supposed to be evaluated using the usual machinery of theoretical evolutionary genetics.
Finally, given these statements by gpuccio, gpuccio’s inference to Design is not circular. gpuccio intends not to exclude cases that later turn out to have a natural mechanism for the CSI. Instead of being circular it is based on a faith that cases of dFCSI that have not yet been investigated will always turn out to be cases of Design.
That’s why the mantra of isolated islands is so critical to the ID position.
And why anything like Lenski or Thornton that challenges isolated islands or which demonstrates that evolution can assemble functions from several co-dependent mutations is lethal to ID.
gpuccio,
Let’s proceed a step at a time.
Is a computer program a “necessity mechanism”?
Here is an example from Mung:
Do you think it does anything other than what it was programmed to do?
I think it will only put an ‘A’ on the screen.
So, is this a “necessity mechanism” according to you?
So evolution proceeds without “intelligent designer” intervention, but our only real difference with IDists is the “OOL”?
Are we close to an understanding Joe?
petrushka,
Yes, and as an analogy, we see software built on existing functions also.
While the “engineers of life”, .i.e. IDists, point to human engineering examples when explaining biology, they refuse to accept that the concept of “inheritance” as used by software, is also applicable to biology.
Every test of evolution ends up with the “improbability” argument that insists all “functionality” appears at once.
Gpuccio 331
It is a common ID move to call an attempt to be precise a complication. What it usually means is that the proponent has not thought things through.
So did it or did it not have dFSCI at time t1? (Sorry to be so complicated).
So we know it but are not aware of it! I am glad to have things simplified.
Actually I think you are saying the same as me – although I guess you find your wording simpler than mine. To assess the dFSCI procedure you have to imagine you do not know what in fact you do know i.e. the origin. I just think that is more difficult procedure than you realise. E.g. when I asked you to imagine you had no knowledge of the origin of the Fibonacci series you dismissed it as being too long ago/hypothetical.
I’m surprised that there is not a list of entities plus the value for dFSCI that has been determined to be present in each entity.
Given that Gpuccio explicitly claims that dFSCI has utility has a design indicator I have to wonder on what is he basing that given no such list seems to exist?
What utility does it have I wonder if it’s now been literally weeks of back and forth attempting to create a single worked example?
A cynic might suggest that all previous examples, if they in fact exist, of “detecting design” via values of dFSCI were never critically examined in the manner currently ongoing. And that cynic might also suggest the reason for that not happening is the same reason that attempts to clarify are perceived as attempts to “complicate things”.
But let us see how things play out.
Gpuccio’s method is parasitic on mainstream research. There is no way to validate dFSCI. It always and forever depends on the current state of ignorance regarding the actual history of genomes.
It shares with all other gaps arguments the quality of dwindling as knowledge increases.
We have all pointed out in various ways that the only conjecture that suggests research is naturalism. One can over time demonstrate plausible natural scenarios, but one can never demonstrate the negative case.
The negative of naturalism is ignorance of the cause.
On what do you base this?
It is precisely by looking at “natural history” as a process that does NOT include an “intelligent designer”, that gives the theory of evolution the explanatory power it possesses.
ID explains natural history as a result of “something unseen” manipulating life-forms in “ways we can’t observe or predict”.
What would you teach students when they ask exactly how and why “dFSCI” is generated, or how and why “semiotic codes” are arbitrarily changed?
Does the “intelligent designer” intervene in a life-form’s “information”, i.e. “dFSCI” or “semiotic codes”, in order to for evolution to occur?
Petrushka:
It’s dFSCI of the gaps, and not much more.
gpuccio on October 29, 2012 at 10:38 am
And here is where I get very, very confused.
November 5, 2012 at 9:08 am
You here have clearly said that if the origin of a string, (i.e. the generator of the information in a string), is a necessity mechanism, then the string does NOT have “dFSCI”, solely because of where the string came from.
You have tied the “origin” of the string to the attribute “dFSCI”.
In order to be consistent, a string, regardless of its “dFSCI” attribute, may or may NOT, be designed.
Is the “dFSCI” attribute of a string, dependent on its origin?
Please make a separate comment with an explanation of this term as it is very difficult to follow an argument if what I thought I understood about a term, turns out to be completely opposite in a new comment.
The point is that the “objects” used in your “design” are on the “island” that life occupies, which means the “search space” is very small and so the improbability argument as used by IDists, is not insurmountable at all.
“Objects” in software design, are sometimes used for completely different reasons than they were initially “designed” for, which seems to be reflected in what we see in life.
New “objects” are routinely built upon existing “objects” using the concept of “inheritance”, with no intentionality of re-using all functionality, and the analogy to this would be DNA that seems to have no purpose in one organism but appears in many other organisms.
While complete “objects” might be complex, their building blocks, i.e. their “methods”, can be quite simple and way below the UPB.
Seen in this way, “objects” can be viewed as configurations of “methods”, not bits, and life can also be seen as configurations of “functionalities”, not pure bitmaps.
Joe, gpuccio,
KF, it is Joe who does not accept programs as “necessity mechanisms”.
gpuccio rules out “necessity mechanisms” and thus programs, from generating “dFSCI” even though the “intelligent designer” might well have used computer programs, just as we human designers do, to “implicitly” generate “information” as opposed to “explicitly” type in final data as a keyboard entry person might.
Gpuccio 349
This is clearer (but really it was not clear before). It gives a firm enough agreement to proceed to the next step.
First. I am sorry but I am going to “complicate” the issue again – which you will hate – but it is relevant (also many of my previous complications have led to a better common understanding).
“knowledge of the origin” is not a binary thing – it comes in degrees – actually in (at least) two dimensions:
1) In detail: e.g. it was designed, designed by a human, designed by a particular human.
2) In certainty: e.g. I actually saw it happen. Someone I know well saw it and told me. I have good evidence/reason to believe.
In any real situation the observer is going to have some knowledge in both dimensions 1 and 2. A digital string is always in some context which tells you something about it. It is going to be extremely rare that a string with a natural origin gives no inkling to the observer that it could arise through a necessity mechanism (and thus automatically does not have dFSCI). Hence the danger of circularity.
Second. The test you describe will be a situation where an observer with limited knowledge did an estimate of dFSCI and then someone else (or that observer later on) discovered what the origin really was. You talk of all the thousands of proofs of the dFSCI correlation. How many instances can you think of where this process has been followed other than specially designed tests by bloggers over the Internet!
Wow, I thought you’d be the first to see the connection. 🙂
Inheritance, as in OOP, has interesting parallels to the way biological complexity evolves..
We see lots of bloated software that has evolved new functions without pruning the dead wood or optimizing the code.
Occasionally you see a program that appears to be designed from scratch, often having a fraction of the file size.
But you can trace the lineage of code, which I suppose is the point.
Joe, gpuccio,
gpuccio, the “necessity mechanism” I am talking about is a program that “generates” information, not simply a recording device.
In your example, the computer could be replaced by a human writing the data on a notepad with no change in the information, and I think you would probably agree that a human being is not a necessity mechanism.
I think you should come up with a different scenario that explains why the “generated output of a computer algorithm”, does not have “dFSCI” if all other requirements, i.e. d F S C and I, are met.
Remember, the computer program, the “necessity mechanism” is not passing data from input to output when I use the analogy of a computer program.
One of the few things Joe and I agree on is that the attribute “dFSCI” as applied to a string, is not dependent on how it was produced.
Exactly!
You can also see the potential of combining functionality from two objects that neither could offer on their own, or were ever imagined to be able to provide on their own.
Its good that we are clarifying terms because now I understand what you mean when you use “necessity mechanism” and “explain”.
When I use “explain” I mean it in a very global sense to mean the reason that the “information” in a string exists, not its presentation or rendering, but why its specific values were arrived at.
A “necessity mechanism” to me, means the “generator of the values” in a string, not a storage mechanism or presentation mechanism.
In short, I have been using “origin” and “explanation” as synonyms for the “generation” of “information”
Can we find suitable terms such as “presenter” and “generator” to show the different meanings?
No, it’s what you’re talking about that I don’t know! 🙂
Seriously, explain what your point is.
What is designed are the human designed “methods” as used in software, which is one half of our analogy.
The other half, what we are making the analogy about, is biology and it is precisely the origins of its “methods” that are the subject of debate.
Good to know that gppucio is able to discern what biological structures are too complex to evolve incrementally, and doesn’t need to do any research.
Damn, why doesn’t everyone else see why research isn’t really necessary?
358
I mean actual examples – not ones that could be done – actual cases other than examples dreamt up to created to illustrate the point in completely unrealistic contexts. There are mean’t to be thousands of them which have demonstrated the utility of the dFSCI process. Surely you can show me one? The alternative is that the empirical correlation only based on hypothetical cases and noddy examples.
Remember the conditions. An observer did not have any idea of the origin. Assessed that the string had dFSCI and then another observer revealed that the string was designed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
But any readable “string” that is output by a computer is ultimately a repository of data, regardless of whether it “defines” values or “defines” functions.
If instead of writing a “string” to a screen however, you instead output data to a D/A converter, you now truly have function.
You would not replicate “definitions” of anything since those are really compile-time responsibilities, not run-time.
The replication of actual runnable code and data is up to the running process and is only limited by computer resources just like any real biological process would be limited by its resources.
Remember, we are dealing with object code at run-time, not source code.
I would not do a simulation at the programming language, i.e. source code level, it would be done with real functional object code which would be significantly below 500 bits for simple “methods”.
As an example, the function of ‘XOR’ing two registers takes one byte (8 bits), in most micros.
Strings of instructions could be chained together into “objects”.
Mung 363
Mung I was asking for an instance which corresponded to Gpuccio’s scenario. This requires
1) An observer who had no idea of the origin but who is aware of a function that string can perform.
2) The observer then does some magical calculations and declares that as far as they are concerned this string has dFSCI
3) The origin of the string is then revealed.
What you did was effectively ask Gpuccio to guess the function. That’s a completely different game.
I don’t understand this question. I would say that all strings can play a role in defining some function or another e.g. I defined a function which was predict London temperature anomalies. A string of London temperature anomalies helps define that function. It is also a way of recording that data (which I guess what you mean by “acting as a repository”) which is a function. So the set of strings which record data is a subset of the strings which can define functions.
🙂
In all our talks, has it truly not sunk in yet that when it comes to software, I play the part of the “Singing Cowboy” while you are the “sidekick”? 🙂
When interpreters parse source-code, they generate tokens which are the the data that gets executed.
Programs written in interpretive languages can be distributed in tokenized form with a run-time engine, so that the source code does not have to be given to customers.
In this case, tokens are to an interpreted language what “object code”, i.e. machine language, is to a compiler.
In the late ’70’s, a computer company called Sage, formalized tokens by using a standard called p-Code, which would actually enable a program written on a Motorola 68000 to run on an Intel 8086 system that supported the p-Code run-time engine.
Like this: Memory[x] = 0xF2; Memory[x+1] = 0xAE;
Those 16 bits are the machine code for “REPNE scansb” for an x86 CPU which will search through sequential memory, i.e. a “string”, until a match is found.
I have “defined” a search “method” that takes only 16 bits to perform a very specific function.
The quote marks mean that the “object” I am building is not a one-to-one equivalent of what is required for objects as seen from the source-code level by a programmer.
My “objects” would be more equivalent to a string of DNA followed by a “stop codon” but they would still be structures of “methods”.
If I design a computer program that dumps memory from a random memory location, that string might contain English text or a string of binary digits in sequential order or even valid machine code.
Since I didn’t “specify” what the actual output should be, the string does not have “dFSCI”, as the ‘S’ attribute is FALSE.
When you read it however you might see, “Please enter your name….”, which seems to be specific, and therefore the ‘S’ attribute of “dFSCI” would be TRUE.
You would have a false positive if you claimed designed “dFSCI”.
Even though the program itself is designed, no output was “specified” since the “search space” and “target” were random.
Fire is a very important function but it was not designed by an intelligent designer, rather it is a chemical process that has both “necessity and random mechanisms”.
If a random lightning bolt hits a dry branch in a forest you will have a fire that will keep burning until it runs out of fuel or something stops it.
The process of fire is functional but not designed and neither are some specific instances of fire though they also sometimes serve a purpose for example, in promoting re-growth in a forest and thus changing the local environment.