“Actually Observed” Means, Well, “Actually Observed”

_{Barry Arrington

November 17, 2014

Intelligent Design}

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In a comment to a recent thread I made the following challenge to the materialists:

Show me one example – just one; that’s all I need – of chance/law forces creating 500 bits of complex specified information. [Question begging not allowed.] If you do, I will delete all of the pro-ID posts on this website and turn it into a forum for the promotion of materialism. . . .

There is no need to form any hypothesis whatsoever to meet the challenge. The provenance of the example of CSI that will meet the challenge will be ACTUALLY KNOWN. That is why I put the part about question begging in there. It is easy for a materialist to say “the DNA code easily has more than 500 bits of CSI and we know that it came about by chance/law forces.” Of course we know no such thing. Materialists infer it from the evidence, but that is not the only possible explanation.

Let me give you an example. If you watch me put 500 coins on a table and I turn all of them “heads” up, you will know that the provenance of the pattern is “intelligent design.” You do not have to form a chance hypothesis and see if it is rejected. You sat there and watched me. There is no doubt that the pattern resulted from intelligent agency.

My challenge will be met when someone shows a single example of chance/law forces having been actually observed creating 500 bits of CSI.

R0bb responded not by meeting the challenge (no surprise there) but by suggesting I erred when I said CSI can be “assessed without a chance hypothesis.” (And later keith s adopted this criticism).

I find this criticism odd to say the least. The word “hypothesis” means:

A proposition . . . set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.

It should be obvious from this definition that we form a hypothesis regarding a phenomenon only when the cause of the phenomenon is unknown, i.e., has not been actually observed. As I said above, in my coin example there is no need to form any sort of hypothesis to explain the cause of the coin pattern. The cause of the coin pattern is actually known.

I don’t know why this is difficult for R0bb to understand, but there you go. To meet the challenge, the materialists will have to show me where a chance/law process was “actually observed” to have created 500 bits of CSI. Efforts have been made. All have failed. The now defunct infinite monkeys program being just one example. It took 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years to get the first 24 characters from Henry IV part 2.

UPDATE:

R0bb responds at comment 11:

That’s certainly true, but we’re not trying to explain the cause of the coin pattern. We trying to determine whether the coin pattern has CSI. Can you please tell us how to do that without a chance hypothesis?

To which I responded:

1. Suppose you watched me arrange the coins. You see a highly improbable (500 bits) pattern conforming to a specification. Yes, it has CSI.

2. Now, suppose you and I were born at the same time as the big bang and did not age. Suppose further that instead of intentionally arranging the coins you watched me actually flip the coins at the rate of one flip per second. While it is not logically impossible for me to flip “all 500 heads,” it is not probable that we would see that specification from the moment of the big bang until now.

So you see, we’ve actually observed the cause of each pattern. The specification was achieved in scenario 1 by an intelligent agent with a few minutes’ effort. In scenario 2 the specification was never achieved from the moment of the big bang until now.

The essence of the design inference is this: Chance/law forces have never been actually observed to create 500 bits of specified information. Intelligent agents do so routinely. When we see 500 bits of specified information, the best explanation (indeed, the only explanation that has actually been observed to be a vera causa) is intelligent agency.

To meet my challenge, all you have to do is show me where chance/law forces have been observed to create 500 bits of specified information.

Comments

So, the specificity is that the 500 coins are all heads? Here's a chance process that can create such a specific outcome: random sampling with replacement. 1. Start with 500 coins, randomly showing heads with probability 0.5 (or whatever number want to start with). 2. Start a new "population" of coins, this time with coins randomly showing heads with probability equal to the frequency of heads in teh previous "population" 3. Repeat Most of the time, you'll have a population that meets the specific requirements within 500 samples. This process, by the way, is pretty much analogous to genetic drift.wd400_{November 17, 2014
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You were shown two plausible scenarios
The challenge does not call for "plausible [to you] scenarios."Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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Adapa,
The definition of ‘bit’ only requires there be two possible states i.e 1, 0. It says nothing about the relative probabilities of the states.
That's how I would think of a binary digit, certainly. But googling for definitions of "bit" I found a reference to the definition used in information theory, which (according to Wikipedia) assumes equal probability of either state. And that's the sum total of my knowledge on the subject.Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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Barry Arrington 1. Yes. A chance process will never result in 500 heads, because, as you say, the probability is too low. Pure chance will almost certainly never do it. A process of chance with the feedback of filtering differential selection can do it easily. Guess which category evolutionary process falls into? You were shown two plausible scenarios that did result in 500 heads with no intelligent intervention, unless you consider crows to be an Intelligent Designer. Sorry if you didn't think through the question before asking it.Adapa_{November 17, 2014
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Keith s
That’s right. It’s the combination of low probability and specification that renders the challenge effectively impossible by definition. Both are necessary to establish the presence of CSI.
This is an interesting comment. I agree with it if you substitute “in practice” for “by definition.” That’s right. It’s the combination of low probability and specification that renders the challenge effectively impossible in practice. Both are necessary to establish the presence of CSI. We are on an even playing field. The definitions are the same for both design and chance/law processes 1. Any 500 coin pattern is going to have an astronomically low probability. This is true whether the pattern was created by design or by chance. A designed 500 coin pattern will have 500 bits of information. A chance pattern will also have 500 bits of information. 2. All 500 coin patterns are, as a matter of logic and physics, within the reach of both design and chance. The definitional playing field has not been tilted one way or the other. Therefore, it is not impossible “by definition” for chance to account for the pattern “500 coins.” It is impossible in practice.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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Learned Hand,
Not to beat a dead elephant, but would it become impossible if the challenge admitted the role of P(T|H) in a CSI calculation? If I understand the term–which I obviously might not!–it rules out non-design origins as part of the determination of CSI, making it effectively impossible to show non-design sources of CSI.
To use the coin-flipping example, every sequence of 500 fair coin flips is astronomically improbable, because there are 2^500 possible sequences and all have equally low probability. But obviously we don't exclaim "Design!" after every 500 coin flips. The missing ingredient is the specification of the target T. Suppose I specify that T is a sequence of 250 consecutive heads followed by 250 consecutive tails. If I then sit down and proceed to flip that exact sequence, you can be virtually certain that something fishy is going on. In other words, you can reject the chance hypothesis H that the coin is fair and that I am flipping it fairly. But for Dembski, H must encompass all "Darwinian and other material mechanisms" that might explain the phenomenon in question. So yes, if P(T|H) is extremely low, where T is a prespecified target, and H is defined as broadly as Dembski requires, then Barry's challenge becomes effectively impossible. If someone finds a natural mechanism producing T with sufficiently high probability, then CSI disappears -- by definition. Barry's challenge is empty. By the definition of CSI, it cannot be met.keith s_{November 17, 2014
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niwrad Learned Hand #46 why do they have to have equal probability? For the very definition of “bit”. The definition of 'bit' only requires there be two possible states i.e 1, 0. It says nothing about the relative probabilities of the states.Adapa_{November 17, 2014
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Mark, you say I am asking for something that is impossible. Yes and no. 1. Yes. A chance process will never result in 500 heads, because, as you say, the probability is too low. 2. No. The pattern is most certainly possible. I’m sure you will agree that an agent is capable of arranging 500 coins into an “all heads” pattern fairly easily. What does this mean? It means that my challenge will never be met. Chance/law processes will never be shown to have produced complex information (500 bits in our example) that conforms to a specification (500 heads in our example). The challenge will never be met not because it is impossible “by definition.” It will never be met because it is impossible in practice. Here is the point of all of this. There is nothing special about the “500 coins” pattern. It is merely a stand-in for all highly improbable patterns that conform to a specification. My challenge will never be met, because no one will ever be able to show me a chance/law process that has been actually observed creating 500 bits of information that conforms to a specification.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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niwrad In fact 1 bit of real CSI means that two possibilities (open/close, 1/0, on/off…) have equal probability to occur. Where did that new requirement for "real" CSI come from? Looks like you just made it up.Adapa_{November 17, 2014
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2. Now, suppose you and I were born at the same time as the big bang and did not age. Suppose further that instead of intentionally arranging the coins you watched me actually flip the coins at the rate of one flip per second. While it is not logically impossible for me to flip “all 500 heads,” it is not probable that we would see that specification from the moment of the big bang until now.
What if you had strange coins that acted so that after you had flipped all of them, the probability any coin would come up heads on the next set of 500 flips would be the proportion of coins that were presently heads? Would you call that a "chance/law process"?Bob O'H_{November 17, 2014
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why do they have to have equal probability?
For the very definition of “bit”.
That confused me until I looked up "bit"--apparently in information theory it is assumed that the two states are equally probable. Thanks, I never knew that. I don't see how it applies to CSI, though, especially as you've used it. Surely Dembski would say that if my 60-40 coin returned one million heads in a row, the result has more than 500 bits of CSI? I don't think he would say the calculation is inapplicable because the underlying states aren't equally probable, would he?
That’s not the case of adapa’s examples, where the odds are even 100-0 (*all* coins on the table are heads).
That's the post hoc result, but not by definition. If you happened to return home before the process was complete (not all coins have been shaken to a resting state, not all coins have been plucked by the bird) then you'd get a partially-selected result rather than "100-0".Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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R0bb:
But for the record, I don’t agree with the argument that the low-probability requirement renders your challenge effectively impossible by definition. After all, low probability events happen all the time.
That's right. It's the combination of low probability and specification that renders the challenge effectively impossible by definition. Both are necessary to establish the presence of CSI.keith s_{November 17, 2014
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Learned Hand #46
why do they have to have equal probability?
For the very definition of "bit".
Let’s say the coin is unfair and the odds are 60-40...
That's not the case of adapa's examples, where the odds are even 100-0 (*all* coins on the table are heads).niwrad_{November 17, 2014
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Barry:
Keith s I have read Specification: The Pattern That. Signifies Intelligence where those terms are discussed on page 3. So, yes, I know what the terms mean in Dembski’s work.
Apparently not, because Dembski makes it absolutely clear that chance hypotheses are required in order to establish the presence of CSI:
In Fisher’s approach to testing the statistical significance of hypotheses, one is justified in rejecting (or eliminating) a chance hypothesis provided that a sample falls within a prespecified rejection region (also known as a critical region). For example, suppose one’s chance hypothesis is that a coin is fair. To test whether the coin is biased in favor of heads, and thus not fair, one can set a rejection region of ten heads in a row and then flip the coin ten times. In Fisher’s approach, if the coin lands ten heads in a row, then one is justified rejecting the chance hypothesis. [Emphasis added]
And:
More formally, the problem is to justify a significance level ? (always a positive real number less than one) such that whenever the sample (an event we will call E) falls within the rejection region (call it T) and the probability of the rejection region given the chance hypothesis (call it H) is less than ? (i.e., P(T|H) < ?), then the chance hypothesis H can be rejected as the explanation of the sample... The more opportunities for an event to occur, the more possibilities for it to land in the rejection region and thus the greater the likelihood that the chance hypothesis in question will be rejected... Rejection regions eliminate chance hypotheses... [Emphasis added]
And on p. 18:
Next, define p = P(T|H) as the probability for the chance formation for the bacterial flagellum. T, here, is conceived not as a pattern but as the evolutionary event/pathway that brings about that pattern (i.e., the bacterial flagellar structure). Moreover, H, here, is the relevant chance hypothesis that takes into account Darwinian and other material mechanisms. [Emphasis added]
You can't establish the presence of CSI without calculating P(T|H), where H represents the chance hypotheses. Thus you are wrong to claim that chance hypotheses are not needed. Dembski disagrees with you, and he is the person who defined CSI. Will you admit, and correct, your error?keith s_{November 17, 2014
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But for the record, I don’t agree with the argument that the low-probability requirement renders your challenge effectively impossible by definition. After all, low probability events happen all the time.
Not to beat a dead elephant, but would it become impossible if the challenge admitted the role of P(T|H) in a CSI calculation? If I understand the term--which I obviously might not!--it rules out non-design origins as part of the determination of CSI, making it effectively impossible to show non-design sources of CSI. If we aren't considering the odds of non-design origins, then adepa's examples @ 31 seem like they fit. So would the distribution of fallen sticks in my front yard; it's extraordinarily unlikely that they'd be arranged in a gradient of big ones near my front door and smaller ones out by the curb. And yet they are, because my dog selects them and tries to drag the big ones inside after walks. (And if my dog counts as intelligence, we could look at the distribution of stones by a floodplain, sediment size at the bottom of a pond, vegetation mass in fire zones or anything else that gets sorted or filtered by nature.) I don't think Dembski would consider these to have CSI, since he'd say there's a high probability of a non-design origin.Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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Adapa, "all that does is push the problem to the definition of “complex function”" Take a car part, look at it, ignore the really simple ones like a sheer pin or piece of wire. There, you have an example of a complex function. Look at proteins, especially some of those really cool ones like are found in the bacterial flagella, in ADP synthase, etc. There's gazillions of examples, each one obviously does something very far beyond simple. Adapa, "ID has always had the problem (some say strategy) of keeping its definitions so vague that ..." The NDE community always has the problem of finding some stupidly simple example and saying "here, see" -- in this case of the simples "this kinda does something" protein. Why does the NDE community want to know where the edge of simplicity is so that it can prove that to be possible? Why doesn't the NDE community show how easily chance + selection can produce the "obviously complex" case? Oh yea, because you can't!Moose Dr_{November 17, 2014
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Barry, the point is that low probability is a necessary condition of CSI. Everyone agrees that "it is most certainly NOT merely low probability that gives the pattern CSI" [italics mine]. Nobody is denying the need for specificity. But for the record, I don't agree with the argument that the low-probability requirement renders your challenge effectively impossible by definition. After all, low probability events happen all the time.R0bb_{November 17, 2014
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niwrad, In fact 1 bit of real CSI means that two possibilities (open/close, 1/0, on/off…) have equal probability to occur. I don't think I've heard this one before; why do they have to have equal probability? Isn't it enough that the final specified result is arbitrarily unlikely, even if one component possibility is more likely than the other? That is, let's say the coin is unfair and the odds are 60-40; I think Dembski would still say a string of 1,000 heads would still exhibit CSI. Is that not right?Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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#44 BA I understand it is not mere low probability. But low probability is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition. Therefore there cannot be a case of CSI without low probability. You have to know there is a low probability of meeting the specification in order to know there is CSI.markf_{November 17, 2014
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Markf @ 42:
You know something has CSI because there is an astronomically low probability of a chance hypothesis causing it.
You obviously read my comment 28 (you quoted it), but you don’t seem to have understood it. Again, as I have tried to explain many times, in my 500 coins example it is most certainly NOT merely low probability that gives the pattern CSI. Let me try to put it this way. If CSI resulted from mere low probability ALL 500 coin patterns would contain CSI. Why? Because all 500 coin patterns have the exact same (low) probability.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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adapa #31 Finally two examples... compliments. Unfortunately your examples cannot count as CSI really created by chance. In fact 1 bit of real CSI means that two possibilities (open/close, 1/0, on/off...) have equal probability to occur. In your #1 example given "the difference in form factor the tails (heads down) tend to walk more than the heads". In #2 "the tails side is slightly shiner than the heads side". These differences are such that in the described scenarios (train's vibration for #1 and crow picking up coins in #2) the probability of having a face of the coin (say "1") is far higher than having the other one ("0"). We don't have a real "bit" 1/0. As a consequence that is not CSI.niwrad_{November 17, 2014
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Barry #40 As several people have tried to explain to you - you have asked people to do something is almost impossible by definition. You know something has CSI because there is an astronomically low probability of a chance hypothesis causing it. So of course no one can meet your challenge. It is like challenging someone to find a married bachelor.markf_{November 17, 2014
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This may help (or add more confusion) Barry: ANY configuration of 500 coins is improbable. This is only true if you assume the (admittedly extremely plausible) chance hypothesis that the probability of one coin being a head (or tail) is independent of all others and is not close to 1. There is always a chance hypothesis in there somewhere. It just may be so obvious you don't see it.markf_{November 17, 2014
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Keith s I have read Specification: The Pattern That. Signifies Intelligence where those terms are discussed on page 3. So, yes, I know what the terms mean in Dembski’s work. Are you going to take a crack at meeting the challenge in the OP? Based on your answers so far I assume not. Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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Your comment is kind of amusing because you grasp that I’m right, but you can’t resist taking a rhetorical swing at me.
I didn't mean it to be a "rhetorical swing." I meant it to be a serious challenge: you take CSI on faith, neither understanding the details of the calculation nor willing to discuss whether your basic premises might be incorrect. When I asked gpuccio to explain how he calculates CSI, he didn't sneer or insult or complain or change the subject. He answered the question, graciously and thoughtfully. Based on your comments here, do you think you could fairly be described as "gracious"?Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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No, because P(T|H) does not depend on how T actually came about. It depends on all the ways T could have come about through non-design means. For example, suppose Barry deliberately places a single coin tails up on a table. That is a designed outcome, but it certainly doesn’t exhibit CSI, because it could easily have been produced by simply flipping the coin. This is important, because we are supposed to be able to assign CSI to things even when we haven’t witnessed their genesis.
Keith, Thanks, that makes sense. I guess I fell into the trap of oversimplifying a probability calculation to make it match my intuition!Learned Hand_{November 17, 2014
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keiths:
Do you understand Dembski’s CSI equation? Do you know what the P(T|H) term represents, and why? Do you know what H stands for?
Barry:
Do you understand that it is pointless to perform a Bayesian analysis when you already know the answer?
I'll take that as a 'no' to all three questions. You've also answered my next question, which is "Do you know that Dembski's approach is Fisherian, not Bayesian?" The answer to that question is also clearly "no".keith s_{November 17, 2014
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Barry: "centrestream, you already know what you have actually observed. Why is that so hard to understand?" Thank you for demonstrating what I have actually observed. I ask a simple, yet serious, question, and you respond with sarcasm. Would you like to try again? What is already known? That something is complex or that something is designed?centrestream_{November 17, 2014
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Barry
keith s @ 27. Do you understand that it is pointless to perform a Bayesian analysis when you already know the answer?
Nobody is trying to perform a Bayesian analysis, nor is anyone trying to find an answer that we already know (by which I assume you mean the actual cause of the pattern). Conditional probabilities do not imply Bayesian analysis. P(T|H) is a factor in Dembski's definition of specified complexity, and Dembski explicitly claims that his design detection method is non-Bayesian. And again, we're not trying to find the cause of the pattern. We're trying to determine whether it has CSI.R0bb_{November 17, 2014
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Adapa @ 31. I assume you are unable to meet the challenge, because you have made no attempt to do so. Maybe you don't understand the challenge. Let me help you. Speculating about how chance/law forces might result in the pattern is not the same as showing that chance/law forces actually did result in the pattern. I actually want to thank you for your comment though, because it illustrates perfectly the Darwinist mindset. Darwinism is the only scientific theory of which I am aware in which evidence-free speculations of the researcher actually count as evidence.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2014
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