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).
Which is exactly what the random genetic variations in every generation provide. Duh.
If you really want the answer, you would help to investigate the issue, instead of expecting others to do all the work.
I am trying to help investigate. To do so I need to understand if there are any entailments to Patrick’s claim. That is why I’m asking questions.
If you really want the answer you’d try and help flesh out his claim.
peace
I don’t think you will find me doing that.
You quote Alan as saying:
But I don’t say that. It seems too simplistic. The organisms design the niche as much as the niche designs the organisms.
So now you are shifting the burden of proof a second time, onto me.
No dice.
Patrick was just skeptical about the claim of “frontloading”.
That is a claim that genomes were originally blessed with the
information to generate the diversity observed in living
organisms.
The burden of proof is on those who claim frontloading. And
you are right that this should be a testable claim. Go find this
frontloaded information. It would have to persist to this day in
order for organisms to continue to adapt to a changing
environment. Or admit that there is no support for this claim.
I would say that information theory is a poor technique for analyzing the issue. The observed facts are that heritable characteristics combined with differential reproductive success can result in the evolution of “irreducibly complex” systems. The idea that all of the “information” (whatever the IDCists mean by that) about descendents must be present in ancestors is patently ridiculous.
fifthmonarchyman,
Nobody. That’s the point. Just a mass of vague handwaving. The genome would need to be big to hold ‘irreducible complexity’, per johnnyb. And now you with ‘it wouldn’t have to be in genes’, contra johnnyb.
I can barely be bothered today; I have some clouds to knit.
johnnyb,
Is there any direct evidence of front loading? One would expect to still see it today, assuming we and our contemporaries are not the end game.
Front Loading is even dumber than Normal ID.
Maybe if they sequenced some DNA and it translated “(C) Copyright 4004 BC GodCo Industries.”
Does god prefer // or /* */ style commenting? If it’s the latter, that’s a good reason to be an atheist.
It does indeed. This is why evolutionary theory with its two-pronged reiteration of variation and selection is so powerful as an explanation.
If there is variation in a population, there will be differential reproduction. The environment is the sieve. Take the pelagic zone, arguably the largest and simplest environment on Earth. Many organisms have evolved to survive in the open sea: from the phytoplankton that are the base of the food chain to the largest mammals on Earth, the blue whale. There are constraints to living in the pelagic zone, but great opportunities too.
Yes, that’s the variation in individuals of a population creating the opportunity for selection to find those solutions.
What is achieved by assuming “Intelligent Design”? It’s not any sort of explanation. Evolutionary theory explains why organisms are adapted to their niche. Golden moles are found in deserts and blue whales in the pelagic zone.
Not evidence? Good grief!
The environment is a source of information about what?
How did it come to be the case that biological organisms can decode that information. Magic?
Are you one of those people who believe that everything is information?
Mung,
I thought you have 17+ books on evolution on your bookshelf that
a) you claim to have read
b) you claim to have understood
Given that you ask such a question I have to question those claims.
No, magic is what you believe in. But to put it simply, as evidently that’s the level you need to be spoon fed at, lava is not a good environment for biological organisms. They ‘decode’ the information that lava is not a good environment by dying.
Your conflation of the type of information a niche provides and the underlying mechanism of the physics of the universe is noted.
And there you have it. ID is not something that is demonstrated, it is something that is assumed.
Is a pebble’s rounded shape a function of its internal pre loaded CSI or its environment?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble
You’ve just described one way the environment participates in the “design” of subsequent populations.
No one is saying that the environment is solely responsible. It is the interaction of replicators with differential reproductive success in the environment that results in better adapted subsequent populations.
Not exactly. All the organism needs is the ability to reproduce without perfect fidelity. There is no need, nor evidence, for front loading of any sort.
I’ve seen a lot of intelligent design creationists claim this, but none have been able to provide that evidence when challenged. Surprise me. Be the first.
What lives, what dies, what survives to reproduce better.
According to theists, yes. According to scientists, whatever mechanisms resulted in the origin of life.
Nope. I’m one of those people who think that intelligent design creationists waffle on about “information” without understanding what they’re talking about.
How could the environment NOT be the source of information about how to survive in that environment?
Demonstrating that sounds like an excellent research project for any Intelligent Designer supporter with an understanding of biology.
johnnyb, know anyone like that?
LOL
We were hoping for something more substantial. Something on the order of “objective, empirical evidence”. Have any?
The idea that all of the “information” (whatever the Patrick means by that).
But that’s not nearly sufficient. The likely path for differential reproduction on variations that are non-teleological is a multi-path downward spiral. There is nothing in differential reproduction that requires the differences to be more fit or even as fit as the parents. If the fitness of the parent is X fit and the parent has children which are all less fit (X – 1, X -2, X – 3), then selection may tell us which variation will likely win over, but it won’t give us any reason to expect adaptation.
I agree. But none of this shows that they evolved non-teleologically. It at most just shows that they adapted and had variations that allowed them to do so. it does not say that the variations came in non-teleologically.
With neo-Darwinism, the Only Truth That Can Be True ™ is that all of these organisms started off information-poor, and then by some miracle, just by being exposed to a problem, the solution, no matter how involved, just happened® to be hit upon by a copying mistake.
With Intelligent Design, one can assume full competency of organisms to find and adapt. Ernst Mayr’s constraint that evolution cannot proceed teleonomically goes away. Instead of relying on magical mistakes, we can instead really look into the mechanics of how this works. We are not weighed down by assuming that it must must must have come from something simpler.
Instead of presuming that evolution works, we can look at the prerequisites of evolution. We don’t have to pretend that it also works when those prerequisites are not there.
Genomes have genes that are specifically for evolving. There are multiple DNA Polymerases, some of which are used specifically when a genome is under stress to generate possible changes. There are feedback mechanisms that turn this on and off. There are mechanisms that point to likely points of benefit. For instance, in somatic hypermutation of antibody genes, there is non-coding DNA which points the mutations to the right area of the gene, so that mutations ONLY happen in the complementary-determining region, and not in the region that signals the immune system. Mutational hotspots tend to be in places that house genes that deal with the external environment instead of internal housekeeping. Genes have SSRs in locations where changing copy number is likely to provide a biologically-reasonable change.
All of this is required for evolution to work in a worthwhile way. With Intelligent Design, you can actually take the data for what it is – a list of prerequisites for workable evolution. Without Intelligent Design, you actually have to presume that more evolution took place in a more hostile environment with better results without these systems. There is no evidence for this, but it must must must be true if neo-Darwinism is true.
Are you trying for a paying job with the DI by producing such meaningless bafflegab bullshit?
Thus EVERYTHING that exists must by definition be fit. It is literally impossible to be unfit in such a paradigm. Every birth defect is an indication of fitness. Every gene copying error is a mark of good genetics. There can be no such thing as bad genetics (other than ones that don’t exist).
johnnyb,
I think evolutionists definition of what they believe in is now so broad, that they can someone with a straight face say that even if evolution is teleological, its not a problem for them.
They have gotten so confused with the details, they have totally lost sight of the implications of their own beliefs. Like Neils and KN, they say, “Why is teleology a problem in a godless world?”
Who has the heart to explain it to them.
I don’t understand how you could come up with this interpretation. Many organisms never reproduce at all. Some reproduce MUCH better than others which also reproduce. It’s a matter of degrees, of RELATIVE reproductive rates.
I’m guessing (I admit you didn’t say this) that you are trying to argue that any organism alive today must be the descendent of a whole lineage of superior reproducers, and therefore fit. For the most part, this has always been the case. The reproductive race gets tougher all the time, and so do the organisms that must reproduce.
That is nonsensical. There is no such thing as “fit” or “unfit” in biology, as the term fitness is actually used. It is usually a measure of relative reproductive success (or the average effect of alleles on reproductive success).
You could say that fit=alive, and unfit=dead. But that would be kind of useless since we already have those two words for that, alive and dead.
Yes, everything that exists and is alive, is by definition alive. But an allele, or an entire species might be on it’s way to extinction because it is being outcompeted by another. For that scenario the term fitness as a relative measure is useful, since it is informative about the rate at which this might take place (and what alleles contribute more or less to the process).
What are you waiting for then? Go on, do it! Stop talking about it and do it!
Or is the Darwinist cabal preventing you from doing that, somehow?
Many years of deliberate misunderstandings.
And then what?
I didn’t go into biochemistry because I was told that biology was about changes in organisms that, by definition, had no purpose. How boring! I went into another field, now I’m regretting it because I was lied to. However, others who have gone into the field to do this have been systematically fired. A friend of mine, after being discovered that he did not tow the party line, was fired and had to spend the rest of his career truck driving. Others get cut off during their PhD. Douglas Axe was working on precisely these lines of inquiry when, viola, he was fired. Michael Behe is permanently publicly shamed by his university. The Polanyi Center at Baylor was shuttered before it was even open. Guillermo Gonzalez, the most productive member of his department, was fired. Richard Sternberg was kicked out of his lab space. The Darwinists literally have an organization that targets and removes people who put too much teleology into biology (the NCSE). A friend of mine tells me that Eugenie Scott herself would call his graduate advisor while he was getting his PhD to convince him to kick him out of the program.
But, of course, it’s ID that’s the threat to science and inquiry. And the lack of lab progress is just because we’re too lazy to do the work. Sure.
I’m doing the things I can without a laboratory and having a real job in something else. It’s nice, because literally no one can fire me, but my output is limited. I’m kind of like the undead – nobody can kill my career because there’s nothing to kill 🙂
I’m going to call bullshit on that.
Not only weren’t you told that “biology was about changes in organisms that, by definition, had no purpose”, you also didn’t use it as a reason not to go into biochemistry. Sorry, not buying it. It sounds stupid to even say it.
What utter guff.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit .
That’s actually not even something that happened. LOL.
What total fucking bullshit. What’s that like, to just sit there and flat out lie through your fucking teeth?
That friend of yours, is that just a euphemistic name for your also-lying alter-ego?
Phoodoo – you are 100% correct. This is what I advise students – don’t say you disagree with “evolution” because, for the current standard definition, it isn’t even true. Instead just be specific about what you disagree with. “I believe in evolution but I disagree with X” (see more here and here). If you believe that your parents’ children are not 100% clones of them, then you are by current definition a card-carrying evolutionist.
I tell students to use that to their advantage.
What a sanctimonious steaming pile of bullshit. You guys fail miserably at trying to get your religious views pushed into science so it must be somebody else’s fault. It’s the Evil Science Conspiracy keeping you guys down. Couldn’t possibly be because of all the dishonest horseshit you IDiots constantly try to pull, bypassing proper scientific vetting of your work and demanding public schools institute an Affirmative Action program for your anti-science stupidity. Couldn’t possibly be because you have nothing of any scientific value to offer, your only products are religiously motivated political propaganda.
Why don’t you do your research at the Biologic Institute? They’re not very busy. Ann Gauger will even loan you her green screen science lab.
Once a Creationist whiner always a Creationist whiner.
Also because you apparently don’t know that biochemistry is about chemistry.
Nor that violas are stringed instruments.
Glen Davidson
Well he does say that the evidence made him a YEC.
Judge what else he says by that. As apparently you did.
Glen Davidson
If we ever get into a war with a bunch of apes I want Flint on my side.
Rumraket can’t handle the truth. 🙂
You could say fit=alive and unfit=dead, but then you’d sound like phoodoo.
You could say fit=alive and unfit=dead, but then you may as well say there are only two values needed to represent fitness, 0 and 1, and you’d be contradicting what you said earlier in the same post.
Bookmarking this one.
You should submit this to the evolutionary turing test. 🙂
I know, right?
Sorry, but that makes no sense at all.
Anyway, biochemistry is a lot less interesting if you are a Creationist. Of the 40 students in my final year of Biochemistry undergrad, there was one Creationist. It was a little weird:
Jean Thomas: “The proteins that comprise the histone core particle are 97% conserved between the pea and the cow.”
39 Pragmatists: “Wow! That’s some serious constraint! Why is that?”
1 Creationist: “God moves in a mysterious way.”
Pragmatists: “What about the tails? What about histone H1? Are there other proteins that show this level of conservation?”
Creationist: “God moves in a mysterious way.”
Pragmatists: “Woah! Check out the hierarchy of olfactory receptor mutations in primates!”
Creationist: “God moves in a mysterious way.”
DNA_Jock: “I’m curious, why are you studying biochemistry?”
Creationist: “To explore the Glory of God’s Creation.”
DNA_Jock: “But to you, it’s all just stamp collecting…”
Creationist: “Yes.”
Nobody kicked him out of anywhere.
The rest of your post seems similarly unconnected to reality.
Re-read the first part of the last sentence you quoted. “In that sense . . . .”
Sufficient for what? What evidence do you have to support your claim?
Your baseless assertion conflicts with empirical observations.
Where is your evidence for any teleological input into the process?
Wrong. All that is required for evolution to work are imperfect replicators and an environment that causes differential reproductive success.
Every organism that survives to reproduce is, by definition, fit enough to reproduce. Do you have a point?
phoodoo is awfully unclear, but I think is trying to say that fitness is trivial because everything that exists is by definition fit. So it’s not useful.
This ignores:
1. The fact that in calculating fitness we take into account fecundity as well as viability. Thus an adult that survived could have fitness 0, or even, say, 6.
2. The fact that in discussing fitness we calculate fitnesses for genotypes, not just for individuals. Thus the average fitness of the AA genotype might be 0.93, or 1.16, or some such.
If I’ve misinterpreted phoodoo, then phoodoo could correct me by, like, being just a little bit clearer.
How did that make you feel, being the only one?
😀
*sigh*
Teleology is not an INPUT. It’s an observation of the way things ARE.
Any more silly questions?