I am working on a series of tutorials to cover the basics of Intelligent Design, especially the mathematics of it. This is my tutorial on Specified Complexity, and I would appreciate any thoughtful criticism of it.
Note that I am specifically requesting criticisms on the content of the video itself, not on applications of the concept that are outside the bounds of the video. This is both to help me (I’m trying to improve my presentation of ID) and to help clarify the conversation (is the criticism of *this* information or of some *other* information).
So if all but one mountain and their pictures were destroyed in a huge cataclysm, the remaining mountain would have lost all it’s information? interesting
colewd,
Of those 15, how many are actually homologs of each other? Nothing like artificially bumping the numbers up. If they are all homologs of 1, then that could not be a much clearer signal of a derived process. And they are, unless you would care to be a bit less vague on which 15 proteins you mean.
There are clear signs of a staged process. To dismiss the extensive research on this as ‘wild speculation’ is grossly insulting to the detailed and diligent scientific work that has gone into this. You are simply propagating Creationist propaganda on this one. Creationists who have barely done a lab-day between the lot of ’em.
Allan Miller,
Not arbitrary at all. Create a test that validates the node and I’m all in. The rest is speculation.
colewd,
House! I presume we are playing Creationist Bingo?
LOL! The Creationist in our ID luminaries always comes out. They just can’t help themselves.
colewd,
And yet you chose to ignore the rest of the post where I referred to tests that validate the node, both in terms of identifying the proteins that came from the respective prokaryote ancestors, and the contribution of the node to Theobald’s analysis. Theobald’s result is remarkable – a squillions-to-one counter-expectation – if it is not, in fact, a node at all.
Allan Miller,
Alan, you are continuing to promote the evolutionary fairy tale. The experimental work done on the flagellum is all by the “creationists”. Look up the work by Scott Minich. He has been studying this motor for 20 years and has done knock out experiments on every protein.
The evolutionists that have written papers on it is just wild speculation without experiment.
What signs are those? The type 3 secretory system? Did that system come before or after the flagellum?
Allan Miller,
Alan, Theobald’s analysis was because the scientific community was punting on RMNS being the whole show. Yes, he showed common biochemistry. This does not experimentally validate common descent. Without a mechanism you have no idea if you are dealing with separate origin events or actual descent.
LOL!
GOD-MAN to the rescue!
😀
Psst…hey colewd…science has known the genetic mechanisms for evolution for the better part of a century.
colewd,
The fact that one can knock out every protein and break function, if that is indeed what he did, is just a pointless waste of a life. Likewise I can take your heart, liver or lungs out and prove you didn’t evolve. Modern interlocking systems can be both irreducibly complex and evolvable. Modern proteins can have no modern homologs and yet still have evolved from other pre-existing DNA sequence. Both of these are trivally true, but the ardent Creationist – which you seem to have unmasked yourself as now – pretends that the possibilities can be dismissed or ignored.
Well, that’s everyone bar Scott Minich summarily dismissed. Not very biased at all, are you? NO-ONE but Scott Minich has done any lab work. That’s what you are going with. Site rules protect you from my true thoughts on that.
The homology of the proteins that you multiply up as having no homologs outside the system. The fact that they have homologs at all is supportive of the very thing you import them as being problematic for.
Shouldn’t God-Man have been reading Field and Stream for information on how outboard motors work?
Allan Miller,
No, there are 15 with not known homologs.
colewd,
It’s Allan.
Theobald’s analysis has abosolutely nothing to do with ‘RMNS’. He constructed an objective test of competing hypotheses. As far as eukaryotes are concerned, I already gave you the mechanism (and I’m not the first): endosymbiosis. If separate origin, why the homology? Why does it look like universal common descent to the most objective tests we can devise? Not just Theobald’s.
The sad part is Creationists like colewd think that cartoon is how the Design actually happened.
colewd,
That’s you being a bit less vague is it? A reference to your claims might help.
Getting back to JohnnyB’s original request, I think that Gordon Mullings has the best advice in response to your simultaneous post at UD
Nothing convinces people obiut specified complexity more than repeatedly presenting a blown up view of a fishing reel. Especially an ABU 6500 C3, the Cadillac of fishing reels.😇
How did you determine scientifically, mathematically, however … that a snowflake is not designed?
Allan Miller,
Instead of spewing BS. Cite the papers that have done experimental work and I will stipulate this point to you.
Designing something doesn’t bring about anything. It doesn’t even begin to explain anything.
One issue here – which colewd has no doubt dismissed before I even finished typing – is that structural proteins can be quite labile, somewhat less so at sites of direct contact. There are literally millions of ways of making a simple short stretch of alpha helix for example. Because of extensive redundancy in the amino acoid library, one can substitute each acid bitwise and end up with two sequence that really are commonly descended but which have no sequence homology. But no, silly idea, forget I ever brought it up; it must be God and no alternative explanation is worth considering.
Allan Miller,
Wake up and smell the coffee. It had everything to do with lack of confidence in RMNS. Thats why he was showing evolution was independent of a mechanism. If there was a proven mechanism this would not be necessary.
(push!) (grunt!) (shove!) There’s gotta be a way to squeeze my Designer God into that gap! There’s just gotta! 😀
Allan Miller,
I have to admit Allan, when you decide to violate the no speculation request you don’t fuck around, 🙂
The alternative and competing hypothesis is design.
colewd,
Spewing BS? You’ve definitely taken on a darker hue of late. I will merely note that you have yet to provide a single reference to any of your claims, so I feel no compunction to take that trouble with mine. You seriously think that no-one has done any lab work on the evolution of the flagellum save the unreferenced work of one Scott Minich. I will simply leave that claim on the record.
Well colewd, there was this guy named Darwin who came up with a pretty good mechanism over a century and a half ago. You should read up on his work and all the follow-on investigations sometime.
colewd,
I am unaware of any such request. Smiley-face wink-wink.
So on what grounds do you dismiss the possibility that homology has been erased, rather than needing to import some … uh … designer?
You forgot the third possibility, natural processes we haven’t discovered and don’t understand yet. Why IDiots always push the false dichotomy “ToE or GAWDDIDIT!” remains a mystery.
Adapa,
As far as the point he was responding to is concerned, natural processes we do know about may readily be involved.
What’s that hypothesis?
Magic.
Can anyone point out any differences between offering “Design!” and offering “Magic!” as an explanation for empirically observed phenomena? Both have the identical explanatory and predictive power
colewd,
That is incorrect. There is nothing in principle to preclude separate origins, even within a ‘RMNS(+D&R&T&LGT)’ framework. Design (or Creation, as it is known in some circles) is not the only means by which separate origins can occur. His test evaluated the competing hypotheses, irrespective of the means by which the different lineages arose or changed. Regardless of motivation, UCD came up the winner.
Around 29:07 you say weighted dice when you mean weighted coin.
Getting back to the OP, I’m curious if johnnyb will explain how his concept of Specified Complexity handles a process involving more that trivial combinational probabilities. For example, a long term iterative process involving feedback from selection and carrying forward heritable traits. Pretty sure we’ve seen such a process before. 🙂
Allan Miller,
sorry my bad 🙁
Here is a reference paper on the protein make up of the motor.
Stepwise formation of the bacterial flagellar system
Renyi Liu* and Howard Ochman*†‡ Apr 16. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0700266104
Allan Miller,
And what did UCD win 🙂
Acartia,
: Can Design Be Excluded?
: 33:25
Design sounds less obviously fake, since minds are known to design.
And then it becomes obvious that they think that minds in fact work by magic.
For ID, there is literally no difference.
Glen Davidson
Design can never be excluded. It is what theory best explains the evidence. But you already know that.
johnnyb, Around the 44 minute mark you start talking about possible objections and how they might be categorized. It might be nice to capture those into a slide. Here’s what I came up with:
Criticisms of Specified Complexity
What Specified Complexity Is
What it is supposed to tell you
Whether it does so successfully
How it might be applied to biology
Criticisms of Specified Complexity
Objections to calculations of ASC
Objections to use of ASC
Objections to Extensions to ASC
Whether a Sequence is unusual
The Background Information
The method of inferring design
If you’re an atheist you can always resort to magic, miracles, and happenstance. Now all you have to do is turn your “lack of belief” into a science.
Is “dead ringer” a technical term?
Allan Miller,
Allan, the flagellar is 100k of DNA sequential space that needs to become organized to produce proteins that spin a motor 100k rpm. 30 proteins need to be assembled and form together in shape and charge and all work together for a single purpose. The odds of this happening by anything but purposeful design is so remote that counting homologies is like the Trump re count in Pennsylvania.
You forgot to show your calculations demonstrating the odds of a natural formation is too remote. Why do you keep making the same claim but can never support the empty bluster?
Wait. Don’t tell me, let me guess. You haven’t watched the video. Am I right?
You don’ know if it’s goal is “persuasion and point scoring, not understanding and constructive discussion” or not.
Don’t be the problem Patrick, be the solution.
Haha. Funny. You see the word SELECTION and don’t notice the AGENCY lurking behind it.
Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference
And you came up with AGENCY and didn’t notice the APOPHENIA underneath it.
What AGENCY lurks behind natural selection Mung? Certainly none that you or the other Creationists can provide any evidence for.
Everyone knows that humans make up the trunk of the tree of life. Without humans there would be no eukaryotes.