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Broader Implications of ID

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In the popular media, ID is often portrayed as Creationism in new clothes.  And indeed, even among ID proponents, the creation implications tend to be predominantly emphasized.  Yet the theory underpinning Intelligent Design has implications beyond the realm of biological history, perhaps it is a much broader theory than most realize at first.  In fact, it may even describe a comprehensive worldview.  The primary reason that ID has such an impact is because materialism underlies many areas of modern thought, and ID is an alternative hypothesis to materialism.

To understand the insights that ID brings, it is important to have a bit of philosophical background to begin with.  There are two basic concepts that are important to know: efficient and final causes.  This may seem a bit off the beaten trail, but stay with me here.  For any event there are two questions you can ask.  You can ask “how did this happen?” and you can ask “why did this happen?”.  As an example, the event of your web browser navigating to this article can either be described in terms of the very complex computer and network architecture and accompanying electrical signals that lead to the retrieval and display of this article (how), or it can be described in terms of the fact that you wished to view this article (why).  Both are valid explanations.  The first explanation is the efficent causal explanation and the second explanation is the final cause explanation.  Now, to relate these concepts back to the interplay between materialism and ID, materialism implies that all events only have efficient causal explanations, and any perceived final causal explanations can be reduced to efficient causal explanations.  On the other hand, ID implies that some events may potentially have irreducible final causal explanations, and no matter what one may know about how an event occurred they will not be able to completely explain its occurrence.

For an application of these two concepts and ID, consider the realm of economics.  Generally there tend to be two schools of thought regarding economics: the decentralized Austrian school and the centralized Kenseyian school.  ID allows us to say that one school is strictly and objectively better than the other.  To see this, consider how wealth is created.  Wealth is created by the creation of new information in the form of complex, specified inventions.  These irreducibly complex devices are formed from many integrated parts to accomplish a specific function or set of functions.  According to ID, individual intelligent agents are the creators of this information.  Thus, an economic system that incentivizes individuals to create new inventions to fulfill useful functions is strictly better than a system that does not.  In a centrally planned economy, there are only a few empowered information creators, who decide how resources are divided amongst the populace.  However, in a decentralized economy, all individuals are empowered to create information.  Since an Austrian economy focusses on decentralizing information production, it is strictly better than a Kenseyian economy at creating wealth, since the Austrian economy enables an enormously larger pool of information creating intelligent agents. 

But how are materialistic assumptions at play in modern economic theory?  The impact of materialism primarily has to do with the notion of wealth.  If you recall the introductory distinction between efficient and final causes, materialism implies that there is no such thing as an irreducible final cause while ID says there may really be final causes.  The added concept you need to see how this applies to economics is that when an event occurs due to a final cause, then at this point information is created.  So, conversely, if there is no such thing as a final cause, as materialism claims, then no information is ever created.  And, if information is tied to wealth creation, then the further implication is that wealth is not created.  In which case, wealth is no longer tied to inventions, but is instead tied to resources.  Since there are only a limited number of resources in the world, economics becomes primarily concerned with the proper distribution of these resources amongst the population, instead of being concerned with allowing the creation of greater amounts of resources.  So, a centralized Kenseyian economy becomes the best kind of economy within a materialistic paradigm, since it least wastefully allocates resources (at least in theory).  But, if the materialism assumption is removed, then the emphasis for economies is changed.  Once the door is opened to the idea that wealth can be created, then economies can look to provide better avenues for wealth creation.  As discussed above, ID further implies that wealth is better created through a decentralized than through a centralized economy.

Now lets consider a very right brained topic, very rarely under the purview of common ID discussion.  Namely, how are the humanities related to the sciences?  Commonly, they are considered two seperate spheres with little interrelation.  Additionally, the humanities, nowadays, tend to be somewhat looked down upon by the more technically oriented fields.  And, due to the greater difficulty in establishing an ROI for the humanities it becomes much harder to secure grant money and stay afloat in academia.  Consequently, out of a combination of insecurity and poverty, the humanities are beginning to sell out more and more in academia, and adopt the false robes of quantifiable, empirical fields and needlessly obtuse technical language. 

How does ID shed light on a solution here?  Well, underlying the difficulties that the humanities face is the worldview of materialism.  Materialism asserts that the only reality is matter.  If the only reality is matter, then only the fields dealing with the description of matter, matter.  Since the humanities ostensibly do not deal with matter, and in fact traditionally deal with entities such as the soul, God, and other such topics, the humanities are considered to be at best entertaining and at worst dangerous deceptions (per the recent rife of cantakerous anti-religion literature).  ID provides a helping hand here by showing that, at the very least, there is open room to doubt that there is nothing more to reality than particles colliding and quantum waveforms collapsing.  Again, to understand why ID helps, we can rely on the handy distinction between efficient and final causes.  Simply enough, if ID is at least possibly true, then there may be other entities at work than the particles and waves.  Furthermore, if ID is true, then final cause explanations are true and important, and final causal explanations are entirely in the realm of the humanities.  The humanities primarily occupy themselves with answering the question why?, and since final causes are the source of intelligently designed events, the humanities turn out to be even more important than the sciences, at least as far as intelligent design is concerned.

And, ID goes further than even this, as we’ll see in the realm of philosophy.

As any student of the history of philosophy can tell you, the modern era has denoted a dramatic change of focus in philosophy.  What used to be a holistic field that attempted to understand man and his relation to reality in totality with rationality, has bifurcated into two realms: contintental and analytical philosophical traditions.  The continental tradition tends to be occupied with questions of meaning and purpose, while the analytic tradition attempts to remove all ambiguity from discourse.  Perchance can we explain this divide in terms of our efficient and final cause distinction?  Perhaps we can if we first look at this distinction as it applies to language and thought.  The distinction between efficient and final causes shows up in linguistics as the distinction between syntax and semantics.  Syntax describes how a language works, the efficient causal portion of language, while semantics deals with the content of language, the purposeful thought and final cause behind a particular word choice.  Analytic philosophy tends to be primarily concerned with the syntax of our thought and language, and has significant concentration on the fields of logic and language syntax.  Continental philosophy tends to be primarily concerned with the semantics, and is often concerned with fields such as phenomenology and qualia.

So, here, even in the realm of philosophy we can see the same bifurcation as we saw in the humanities.  And, as we saw in the humanities, the analytic portion of philosophy is often considered the more reliable.  However, continental philosophy, instead of trying to make itself more quantifiable and objective has decided to embrace subjectivity.  Here again, ID is able to provide a useful perspective.  As we saw with the humanities, ID implies that the field of final causes may be much more relevant than it is usually credited nowadays, so implies that the syntax of analytic philosophy provides a substrate for the content of continental philosophy’s semantics, in the same way that we need grammar and vocabulary in order to express ideas in language.  And thus, ID provides a precise way of describing the relationship between analytic and continental philosoph, which can provide an approach for integrating the two fields.

By unifying humanities and sciences, and the fields of philosophy, ID now opens the way for providing a framework for ethics and morality.  In the middle ages, and throughout much of western history, morality has been understood within a framework of natural law.  This framework was explained by Aristotle by the notion that everything had a function, and that life was lived well by fulfilling one’s function.  Thus, morality was explained in terms of living according to a purpose, a final cause.  However, with the advent of materialism, the notion of natural function became discredited.  Why this happened is easy to see if we think of functions as final causes.  As explained previously, materialism does away with final causes, replacing them all with efficient causes.  Consequently, with the removal of final causes, so also was functionality and thus natural law based morality removed.  But, if materialism is not a foregone conclusion, then there may well be a system of functionality embedded in our world, within which we can define a moral theory based on natural law.

And with that, I bring to a close my brief, but indepth look at some of the non-biological implications that intelligent design theory has.  There are numerous other interesting implications of ID, but I will need to cover them in a new article.

Comments
Joseph wrote: “ID is not about the designer(s). ID is about the detection AND study of the design.” (#43) (This promoted me to ask the previous question just asked in another thread.) In #51, which seems to be a response to #43 as much as the post it quotes, RHampton wrote: “Yes, but in an article like this (Broader Implications of ID), the discussion goes beyond what ID theory describes. / So the who and what the designer(s) are, by necessity, a part of the investigation into final causal explanations.” It made me wonder, as a relative new-comer here: is there a consensus or anything near it about this at UD? Is ID ‘supposed to be’ about the (who and what are the) designer(s), or not? There was little to no follow-up about this on the thread. I also note that Eric Holloway wrote a rather provocative statement (especially for a computer programmer, if that is indeed what he is) in his article: “the humanities turn out to be even more important than the sciences, at least as far as intelligent design is concerned.” Yet no one commented on this, neither objecting to nor even engaging it. Why cut Eric slack that you have not afforded to other proponents of the humanities and social sciences on this same topic? This seems like party-line ideological stuff (not meant negatively), folks, while I'm coming to the table with a non-partisan approach. Are you not willing to listen to someone far ahead of Eric's holistic-intended conjectures? “By unifying humanities and sciences, and the fields of philosophy, ID now opens the way for providing a framework for ethics and morality.” – Eric Perhaps people agreed to silently disagree on this. There was just no response to it. But it got me wondering how the ‘origins of life’ and/or ‘origins of biological information’ can be said (or made) to impact ethics and morality? It was a surprise for me to read Eric’s 2012 post today and to actually see the article applauded at UD, especially by StephenB in #11, after some of the contrarian things he’s said to me re: “the non-biological implications that intelligent design theory has.” Maybe folks at UD are more ‘reflexive’ and open to hearing about trailblazing approaches than it first appeared! Or perhaps there is a great desire for ‘relevance’ where it has not (yet) been achieved...Gregory
July 9, 2012
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One example of complex information (a novel protein) apparently arising from a frame-shift mutation, a nylon degrading enzyme: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC345072/pdf/pnas00609-0153.pdfwateron1
September 5, 2011
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Okay. I'm here Julie. Present your argument.freethinker
September 2, 2011
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Yes, but in an article like this (Broader Implications of ID), the discussion goes beyond what ID theory describes.
Simply enough, if ID is at least possibly true, then there may be other entities at work than the particles and waves. Furthermore, if ID is true, then final cause explanations are true and important, and final causal explanations are entirely in the realm of the humanities,
So the who and what the designer(s) are, by necessity, a part of the investigation into final causal explanations.rhampton7
August 30, 2011
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Are you kidding? You should know the market is the estimate by the public of the the value of the various entities of the economy which is the result of of the enginuity and productivity of individual entities (intelligent agents) whose creativity is enormous compared to the few keyseyan central planners.
But that's exactly the point that Adam Smith made. The decisions made by the invisible hand are not how to make products, but how to price them, and how many to make. These are not trivial decisions. And they are exactly analogous to the decisions made in biology as to which alleles will increase and which will decline in frequency. That is why Darwin attributed his natural selection insight to Adam Smith (or the Scottish Economists, as he put it). Adam Smith knew that individual intelligence is probably present in all nations, but that prosperity and wealth was most effectively created not by central planning but by the invisible hand operating in a free market. Individuals, no matter how intelligent, cannot set prices and production goals for large entities like nations. And we can observe this in action with the rise and fall of even the largest corporations. No matter how much they plan,their planning efforts are swamped by the market.Petrushka
August 30, 2011
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rhampton7:
The core of ID theory rests on logical inferences – that’s how design is detected. Once accepted, inferences ought to followed if the intention is to consider the “Broader Implications of ID”
No one is prevented from following any inferences. Wm Dembski states this in "No Free Lunch". It is that those other questions are separate from ID.Joseph
August 30, 2011
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You're welcome. I have a couple more ideas that I hope to have time to write up shortly.Eric Holloway
August 29, 2011
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The parent deleted their comment.Eric Holloway
August 29, 2011
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Yep, and you should take those comments of mine with a grain of salt. However, I do have some expertise in a couple of those areas, since I have taken quite a lot of philosophy in my undergrad. Plus, there's a difference between what I'm doing and what the critics are doing regarding Dembski's work. The critics were claiming that Dembski didn't know what he was talking about in an area where he was clearly an expert and they clearly were not. On the other hand, it is quite appropriate to suggest ways that one's own expertise can shed light on other fields that one is familiar with, as I attempt to do here.Eric Holloway
August 29, 2011
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Yeah, that is a good one. One angle I've come up with so far is the idea of self organization within chemistry. According to ID, there isn't really such a thing as self organization, since the information for the "emergent" structures is already implicit in the original chemical state. So, at the very least, it is a good caution for chemists to not put any stock in the concept of self organization.Eric Holloway
August 29, 2011
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The core of ID theory rests on logical inferences - that's how design is detected. Once accepted, inferences ought to followed if the intention is to consider the "Broader Implications of ID"rhampton7
August 29, 2011
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ID is not about the designer(s). ID is about the detection AND study of the design. And then there is Newton's First Rule- Don't add unnecessary entities.Joseph
August 29, 2011
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Currently ID has no means to make any kind of determination about the possible number of designers involved in Earth's history, it can only provide a means to detect design. Thus if ID implies that the actions of many (thousands of, millions of) intelligent agents leads to an emergent order from the complex dynamics of the market, then it's reasonable to follow the inferences.rhampton7
August 29, 2011
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The movie "Time Bandits" is an interesting argument for multiple designers...Joseph
August 29, 2011
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ID provides a coherent basis for the invisible hand of the market. Since the market is the conglomeration of intelligent design by intelligent agents, ID implies that there would be an emergent order and economy to its behavior.
An interesting argument for multiple designers during the history of life on Earthrhampton7
August 29, 2011
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Hi Eric, I'd just like to say thank you for a really interesting, thought-provoking piece, with lots of good ideas. Thanks again.vjtorley
August 29, 2011
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Nick matzke:
The evolution of new genes with modified sequences and new functions is the origin of new information, if the term “new information” has any biological meaning at all.
Good luck demonstrating those new genes arose via blind, undirected chemical processes.Joseph
August 29, 2011
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Darwinist: "Naturalistic forces alone can produce information." ID proponent: "Intelligent agents and only intelligent agents have been known to produce information." Darwinist: "Please define 'information' so that I may scrutinize your claim. What do you mean when you use that term? ID proponent: "It means whatever you thought in meant when you said that nature can produce it." How can anyone not love this.StephenB
August 29, 2011
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NickMatzke:
Since we know natural processes can create new information, the core ID argument is sunk.
Except that isn't the argument, Nick. You have been told this many times and you still refuse to listen. That measn you have serious issues and should seek help. That said there isn't any evidence that blind, undirected processes can produce information from scratch.Joseph
August 29, 2011
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At 3, Nick claims:
Since we know natural processes can create new information, the core ID argument is sunk.
At 3.1, Eric challenges:
Thanks for the response, that’s an interesting point about natural processes. Can you show me the evidence that natural processes create new information?
To which Eric replies:
The evolution of new genes with modified sequences and new functions is the origin of new information, if the term “new information” has any biological meaning at all.
Note how Nick has simply reiterated his claim, and refers to an article that simply assumes that the generation of novel information is "natural" and not better described as "intentional". Nick, unless you can direct us to research that has developed a metric that can vet such genetic variation as better described as the result of "natural" mechanisms (as opposed to "artificial", or intentional) within the probabilistic bounds of such unguided systems, all you can do, and in fact all you have done, is assert that such is the case. Whether ID proponents obfuscate the term "information" or not is irrelevant to the fact that you and those of your ilk have yet to provide a metric that can be used to substantiate your claims about the categorical origin of biological information.William J Murray
August 29, 2011
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further notes to the 'fantasy' science of Nick: This following paper, and audio interview, shows that there is a severe 'fitness cost' for cells to carry 'transitional' proteins that have not achieved full functionality yet: Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness - May 2010 Excerpt: Despite the theoretical existence of this short adaptive path to high fitness, multiple independent lines grown in tryptophan-limiting liquid culture failed to take it. Instead, cells consistently acquired mutations that reduced expression of the double-mutant trpA gene. Our results show that competition between reductive and constructive paths may significantly decrease the likelihood that a particular constructive path will be taken. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.2 Testing Evolution in the Lab With Biologic Institute's Ann Gauger - audio http://www.idthefuture.com/2010/05/testing_evolution_in_the_lab_w.html In fact the Ribosome, which makes the myriad of different, yet specific, types of proteins found in life, is found to be severely intolerant to any random mutations occurring to proteins. The Ribosome: Perfectionist Protein-maker Trashes Errors Excerpt: The enzyme machine that translates a cell's DNA code into the proteins of life is nothing if not an editorial perfectionist...the ribosome exerts far tighter quality control than anyone ever suspected over its precious protein products... To their further surprise, the ribosome lets go of error-laden proteins 10,000 times faster than it would normally release error-free proteins, a rate of destruction that Green says is "shocking" and reveals just how much of a stickler the ribosome is about high-fidelity protein synthesis. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090107134529.htm And exactly how is the evolution new life forms suppose to 'randomly' occur if it is prevented from 'randomly' occurring to proteins in the first place? As well, the 'protein factory' of the ribosome, which is the only known machine in the universe capable of making proteins of any significant length, is far more complicated than first thought: Honors to Researchers Who Probed Atomic Structure of Ribosomes - Robert F. Service Excerpt: "The ribosome’s dance, however, is more like a grand ballet, with dozens of ribosomal proteins and subunits pirouetting with every step while other key biomolecules leap in, carrying other dancers needed to complete the act.” http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev200910.htm#20091015a Moreover, scientists are finding many protein complexes are extremely intolerant to any random mutations: Warning: Do NOT Mutate This Protein Complex: - June 2009 Excerpt: In each cell of your body there is a complex of 8 or more proteins bound together called the BBSome. This protein complex, discovered in 2007, should not be disturbed. Here’s what happens when it mutates: “A homozygous mutation in any BBSome subunit (except BBIP10) will make you blind, obese and deaf, will obliterate your sense of smell, will make you grow extra digits and toes and cause your kidneys to fail.”... the BBSome is “highly conserved” (i.e., unevolved) in all ciliated organisms from single-celled green algae to humans,..." http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev200906.htm#20090630a Which begs the question, "If this complex of 8 proteins which is found throughout life, is severely intolerant to any mutations happening to it now, how in the world did it come to be in the first photosynthetic life in the first place? Even if evolution somehow managed to overcome these impossible hurdles for generating novel proteins by totally natural means, evolution would still face the monumental hurdles of generating complimentary protein/protein binding sites, in which the novel proteins would actually interact with each other in order to accomplish the specific tasks needed in a cell (it is estimated that there are least 10,000 different types of protein-protein binding sites in a 'simple' cell; Behe: Edge Of Evolution). What does the recent hard evidence say about novel protein-protein binding site generation? "The likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of the probability of developing one: a double CCC (chloroquine complexity cluster), 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the entire world in the past 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety (just 2 binding sites being generated by accident) in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable." Michael J. Behe PhD. (from page 146 of his book "Edge of Evolution") Nature Paper,, Finds Darwinian Processes Lacking - Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: Now, thanks to the work of Bridgham et al (2009), even such apparently minor switches in structure and function (of a protein to its supposed ancestral form) are shown to be quite problematic. It seems Darwinian processes can’t manage to do even as much as I had thought. (which was 1 in 10^40 for just 2 binding sites) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/nature_paper_finally_reaches_t.html The Sheer Lack Of Evidence For Macro Evolution - William Lane Craig - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023134 Dr. Behe's empirical research agrees with what is found if scientists try to purposely design a protein-protein binding site: Protein Binding - By Chance of By Design? - Fazale Rana Excerpt: When considering this study, it is remarkable to note how much effort it took to design a protein that binds to a specific location on the hemagglutinin molecule. As biochemists Bryan Der and Brian Kuhlman point out while commenting on this work, the design of these proteins required:,,, …cutting-edge software developed by ~20 groups worldwide and 100,000 hours of highly parallel computing time. It also involved using a technique known as yeast display to screen candidate proteins and select those with high binding affinities, as well as x-ray crystallography to validate designs.,,, If it takes this much work and intellectual input to create a single protein from scratch, is it really reasonable to think that undirected evolutionary processes could accomplish this task routinely? http://networkedblogs.com/jRdlRbornagain77
August 29, 2011
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Nick, once again you claim that neo-Darwinian evolution is a established fact but you offer no empirical support for your view save for comparative genomics, in which you have presupposed your conclusion in your analysis of the data, yet when it is pointed out to you that there are empirically verified severe constraints to the evolvability of any protein/gene sequences, you simply ignore this as if you are being fair with the evidence: Dollo’s law, the symmetry of time, and the edge of evolution - Michael Behe - Oct 2009 Excerpt: Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution.,,, A time-symmetric Dollo’s law turns the notion of “pre-adaptation” on its head. The law instead predicts something like “pre-sequestration”, where proteins that are currently being used for one complex purpose are very unlikely to be available for either reversion to past functions or future alternative uses. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/dollos_law_the_symmetry_of_tim.html Severe Limits to Darwinian Evolution: - Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: The immediate, obvious implication is that the 2009 results render problematic even pretty small changes in structure/function for all proteins — not just the ones he worked on.,,,Thanks to Thornton’s impressive work, we can now see that the limits to Darwinian evolution are more severe than even I had supposed. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/severe_limits_to_darwinian_evo.html#more Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability. October 2009 Excerpt: The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19765975 The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway - Ann K. Gauger and Douglas D. Axe - April 2011 Excerpt: We infer from the mutants examined that successful functional conversion would in this case require seven or more nucleotide substitutions. But evolutionary innovations requiring that many changes would be extraordinarily rare, becoming probable only on timescales much longer than the age of life on earth. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2011.1/BIO-C.2011.1 When Theory and Experiment Collide — April 16th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: Based on our experimental observations and on calculations we made using a published population model [3], we estimated that Darwin’s mechanism would need a truly staggering amount of time—a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that we studied. http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/04/16/when-theory-and-experiment-collide/ “Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed - along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering) "A problem with the evolution of proteins having new shapes is that proteins are highly constrained, and producing a functional protein from a functional protein having a significantly different shape would typically require many mutations of the gene producing the protein. All the proteins produced during this transition would not be functional, that is, they would not be beneficial to the organism, or possibly they would still have their original function but not confer any advantage to the organism. It turns out that this scenario has severe mathematical problems that call the theory of evolution into question. Unless these problems can be overcome, the theory of evolution is in trouble." Problems in Protein Evolution: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/blocked.html Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors - Doug Axe Excerpt: Contrary to the prevalent view, then, enzyme function places severe constraints on residue identities at positions showing evolutionary variability, and at exterior non-active-site positions, in particular. http://nsmserver2.fullerton.edu/departments/chemistry/evolution_creation/web/AxeProteinEvolution.pdf Darwin's God: Post Synaptic Proteins Intolerant of Change - December 2010 Excerpt: Not only is there scant evidence of intermediate designs leading to the known proteins, but the evidence we do have is that these proteins do not tolerate change. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/post-synaptic-proteins-intolerant-of.html As well, the 'errors/mutations' that are found to 'naturally' occur in protein sequences are found to be 'designed errors': Cells Defend Themselves from Viruses, Bacteria With Armor of Protein Errors - Nov. 2009 Excerpt: These "regulated errors" comprise a novel non-genetic mechanism by which cells can rapidly make important proteins more resistant to attack when stressed, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091125134701.htmbornagain77
August 29, 2011
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"We’ve all noticed the ID critics all speak outside of their realm of expertise. . . . computer scientists think they know it all when it comes to evolution." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/critics-agree-with-dembski-the-no-free-lunch-theorem-applies-to-evolution/ And yet here is an ID-supportive computer scientist whose expertise has expanded to philosophy and economics?paragwinn
August 29, 2011
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Sure, I've been thinking about it for awhile. One issue is getting ahold of the right kind of data, I need data that both shows the trades, and also somehow identifies who is trading. The ids don't need to reveal the actual traders, they can be numbers that show when the same agent is performing multiple trades. The way I envision this metric working will be the subject for a future post.Eric Holloway
August 28, 2011
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I've used his CSI metric to empirically differentiate my behavior from that of AIs, so I wouldn't consider it a specious metric. Yes, it is often difficult to apply, but that is more a problem of practice than a problem with the metric itself. If you are interested in my application of CSI, let me know. My work currently needs some cleaning up, but if enough people show interest I will indeed clean it up and post it at some point. Thanks for the continued exchange, so far it is useful, EricEric Holloway
August 28, 2011
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Dr Matzke, Are you kidding? You should know the market is the estimate by the public of the the value of the various entities of the economy which is the result of of the enginuity and productivity of individual entities (intelligent agents) whose creativity is enormous compared to the few keyseyan central planners. Your Keynsian central planners have just proved their ineptitude with the recent multi-billion deficit ballooning stimulus.pilotfo64
August 28, 2011
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"In a capitalist economy, no one is sitting around, planning the amount of national production of products so that supply meets demand." Correct. "Nevertheless, you end up with a national balance of supply and demand" No. There isn't a "national balance of supply and demand". Demand outstrips supply every time. It is the materialists who ignore this. What makes capitalism work, is that each agent gets to decide, based on price, what is important to them. That is, inherently, an individual choice. What makes centralized economies bad is that not only, as we have pointed out, does it remove designers from the task of making the economy efficient, but it also moves decisions into the hands of people who don't know or care about the values and needs of the individuals. So, rather than each actor solving for themselves which things are valuable enough to justify their price, in a planned economy, that decision point (i.e. design point) is stripped away. What makes the economy work is not an invisible hand, but rather each person decides for themselves what is valuable and worth the price. Therefore, the usage of goods matches the values of the people. In a planned economy, you have problems with supply (because not enough designers are empowered to improve capital assets), and problems with demand (because individual consumers are not empowered with decisions regarding their own values). In a free market, supply is increased because the designers can improve capital. Demand is made to suit the needs of the people, because each person makes their own choice about what is valuable. Welcome to Austrian economics - one of the few fields which is methodologically dualistic!johnnyb
August 28, 2011
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Thanks for the response, that’s an interesting point about natural processes. Can you show me the evidence that natural processes create new information? I’ve been looking for such evidence for a long time, but every counter-ID article I’ve read has, unfortunately, resorted to some form of subterfuge. Believe me, if I found good anti-ID fodder I’d be all over it, since skepticism about ID is what originally lead me to investigating its veracity
The evolution of new genes with modified sequences and new functions is the origin of new information, if the term "new information" has any biological meaning at all. See e.g.: Long et al. (2003). "The origin of new genes: glimpses from the young and old. Nature Reviews Genetics. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+origin+of+new+genes%3A+glimpses+from+the+young+and+old&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on This article, and the dozens it reviews, were not written in response to ID or anything like that. Essentially all ID responses to this work rely on obfuscation and special pleading about the definition of "information". Yes, say ID advocates, genes have information. But we disagree that new genes with modified sequences have new information, because...well, there never is any "because" given. The real because is "because this core ID argument would be sunk if we admitted new genes were new information. After evolutionists beat up on the ID information argument for years and years with this article, Casey Luskin finally produced a response. But his "response" boiled down to asserting that processes like mutation, rearrangement, transposition, and duplication are "magic" -- even though these are well-known, oft-observed mutational processes! Not much of a response. Re: economics -- I figured you might go the route of saying capitalism has more intelligent designers acting than does a command economy. But this doesn't really wash as a response. In a capitalist economy, no one is sitting around, planning the amount of national production of products so that supply meets demand. Instead, you have people acting in their local self-interest, completely ignoring the national situation. Nevertheless, you end up with a national balance of supply and demand -- it is an emergent phenomenon arising out of the aggregation of simple behavior from many actors making local decisions. The process and result can even be modeled and predicted with equations. Basically, forces balance and find an equilibrium. Similar balanced equilibria occur in many other systems in ecology, geology, biology, etc., anywhere you have negative feedback processes. It is certainly interesting that it happens in economics, but it's not really intelligent design. Intelligent design would be if someone decided what the best national price is -- but we know how poorly that works, compared to letting the market work.NickMatzke_UD
August 28, 2011
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Would an intelligent research chemist working in a lab to conjure up new drugs for big Pharma. suffice?alan
August 28, 2011
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But, even if ID worked, your anti-Keynesian logic wouldn’t follow. ID’s skepticalness about natural selection and other self-organization processes would, if ID people were being consistent, lead to skepticism about the invisible hand of the market. Unintelligent processes can’t produce anything but noise and damage, only intelligence can produce coherent and effective function, right?
No. The so-called invisible hand is a figure of speech. When in reality, a free market consists of masses of individual intelligent agents acting in their own self interest to meet their needs and wants from scare resources. While central planning consists of a limited number of individual intelligent agents acting in their own political interest to meet an economy's needs and wants from scarce resources. Central planning does not and cannot work, because it is to simplistic and too stupid.jstanley01
August 28, 2011
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