It seems we need more back to basis by us deplorable lightweight ID-iots, again.
Here, Bob O’H refuses to take the trillion member case observational base that functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information [FSCO/I for short] is a reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration as key causal factor.
Accordingly, in the answering ID is religion BTB thread, I just answered him at no. 31:
[KF, 31:] >>Let’s pick up on points:
>>As for FSCO/I, I’ve never seen it been applied to any real example,>>
That is an amazing admission for an objector that has been around UD for years, not only as GP above has spoken to, but the many cases that were used as tests/challenges and the like.
The text of presumably your post is 1269 ASCII characters, at 7 bits per character. The config space implied is 2^8,883 or 1.12*10^2,674. The atomic resources of our sol system or the observed cosmos across ~10^17 s, and at fast rates of 10^12 – 14/s, would not be able to scratch more than a negligibly tiny proportion of the space of possibilities, so blind chance and/or mechanical necessity are not feasible as credible causal explanation. So, we infer to what on a trillion member base is known to reliably produce such FSCO/I. Intelligently directed configuration.
All of this has been explained and exemplified many, many times.
>> and to the extent it has any validity it just seems to be a calculation of the size of a state space.>>
As just seen, it is far more, it is an assessment of the credibility of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity being able to search more than a negligibly tiny fraction of a space of configs.
Where, the underlying point is that complex functionally specific organisation depends on multiple well matched parts with correct arrangements and appropriate coupling if it is to work. Just visit your friendly local mechanic’s shop if you are in doubt as to what this means.
This confines function to isolated islands in the space of possibilities, posing a stiff search challenge to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity.
Then, we see that a complex 3-d organised functional entity, as AutoCAD etc exemplify, is readily reducible to a string of y/n q’s and a’s in a description language, i.e. analysis on bit strings is WLOG.
Going further, a obvious biological case is D/RNA and the protein family of molecules in the living cell. A viable genome size is about 100 – 1,000 kbits at the low end, thus we see the OOL challenge emerging. We have to account for the quantum of coded algorithmic information that shapes proteins. We then have to ponder that algorithms and implementing machines — here built from essentially the same means — are based on codes and purposeful designs that use codes coupled to execution machinery, thus both a hardware and a software engineering challenge, wit codes as a manifestation of language, Yes, even the machine language we see in the living cell.
100 – 1,000 kbits is a bit more than the amount of info that in the case of your comment above, was enough to reliably infer intelligently directed configuration.
We have excellent reason to infer that the living cell, from OOL up is designed, and further that body plans which require ~ 10 – 100++ million bits to effect, are further designed.
Design best accounts for the tree of life from its roots.
All this of course has been laid out again and again here at UD and elsewhere, just studiously brushed aside.
>> But even huge state spaces can be traversed to find optima (and evolution in the natural world isn’t even about finding optima: it’s just about finding something better).>>
You here pose two issues. First, given the architecture of FSCO/I we see isolated islands of function, so you are addressing at level one increments of function within an island, which is not an issue for ID or even YEC for that matter. Micro-evo within the body plan and it seems up tot sometimes the family level in taxonomical terms.
As you know or should know, were you to be actually addressing the substantial issue as presented over many years (and you are a long-term objector at UD), the issue is to find islands of function in large config spaces.
Thus this first level builds on the prior misconceptions.
At second level, the issue is search for golden search. Yes, some searches in certain cases are well adapted and work quite effectively. But there is no one size fits all golden search. Horses for courses, and searches for cases.
More broadly, a search in a space is a subset sampled from it. Thus the set of possible searches is tantamount to the power set of the space. So for a space of n configs, we are looking at a search of order 2^n. So, at the FSCO/I threshold, 2^(10^150) or more.
Search for a golden search is exponentially harder than search for a an island of function.
The oh there is a golden search objection fails.
>>So I’m afraid I don’t take the “trillion member empirical base” that seriously. Sorry.>>
This seems to be the root issue. For, by refusing to examine the world of FSCO/I around us and its characteristics, there is a lack of appreciation of the problem at stake.
That is why trivially answered objections keep on being recirculated even here at UD after many years, much less in the echo-chamber objector sites.
And indeed there are trillions of cases in point, ranging from text in this thread to car engines and computers to the threading of nuts and bolts or the teeth of gears. Even, to sustain a smooth optical surface or a precise levelled floor in a factory is non-trivial and manifests FSCO/I. Not to mention things like stonehenge or statues carved in cliff faces (vs natural “man face” phenomena), a circle of stones seemingly arranged to align with astronomical phenomena.
Perhaps, it is time for fresh thinking by objectors to the design inference?>>
Back to basics, yet again. END