Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Congratulations Dave Thomas!

August 22, 2006
Intelligent Design
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Dave has proven beyond a doubt that intelligent agents can construct useful trial and error algorithms.  As long as the way the trials are conducted and the way the results are judged is well specified then trial and error algorithms work!  Of course we all learn to search for solutions using trial and error as children.  Or so I thought.  Maybe Dave Thomas is just discovering it now and thinks he’s stumbled onto something revolutionary.  The $64,000 question remains unanswered.  Who or what specified how trials in evolution were to be conducted?  The only answer I’ve heard  from chance worshippers is that some mystical chemical soup burped out a living cell containing a protein assembly machine called a ribosome driven by an abstract digitally encoded control program and a data library containing abstract digital specifications for a large number of proteins required for the cell to function in an information storage molecule called DNA.   In point of fact, information in the  DNA molecule is required to construct a ribosome and a ribosome is required to duplicate a DNA molecule.  Which came first: the protein or the robotic protein making machine that requires parts made of proteins?    Maybe Dave can find the answer by trial and error.  Let’s all wish him luck.

Good luck, Dave!

Comments
What Dave's challege *does* show is that design detection isn't so easy, and may be impossible in a frontal sort of way. I'm open to ID, not because anyone has demonstrated that things like the flagellum must be designed, but because of the failure of MET/NDE to give a sufficient account of what they claim to explain. MET is the best that methodological naturalism can do so far. And it isn't very impressive to me.mike1962
August 22, 2006
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Joseph: Well, it is hardly relevant what Dembski writes if it isn't reflected in his EF. Are you saying that rolling 5, 4, 1, 4 is both a "chance" event AND a "necessity" event? Well, how could one reach such a conclusion by using the EF? You either accept the event as mere "necessity" or you exclude "necessity" and come up with mere "chance". You can't have it both ways. It makes little difference to state outside the model, that *ahem* although we formally got CHANCE, there was in fact a bit of NECESSITY involved as everyone should know. We simply would no longer speak of these two terms as they were defined and used in the model. Besides, EF analyses "events" which strongly hints at single-step processes. Most objects of study, including e.g. human artefacts, writings and even crystals, are agreed by even IDers to be products of multi-step processes. The intermediate forms of multi-step processes are typically not discussed, however, and the mere end result is being studied as a single "event". When considering living organisms, it is even more obvious that you can't rule out a model which includes a multi-step process with many intermediate forms, each intermediate produced from its predecessor by the combination of chance and necessity. I.e. non-random seletion acting upon random mutation. How about including a LOOP evaluating each step individually before jumping into the Design hypothesis?caligula
August 22, 2006
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Thats it isn't it Mike. I had a read through the thread over at PT and the complaint is that the front loading of the answer cannot be shown in the algorithm. But of course there is front loading in the example because there is a goal in mind. The goal is fixed and doesn't move and the selection criteria have been choosen to move towards that goal. How can anybody have the gall to suggest that this is not a telological process ? If you have an interative process that is working towards a prespecified goal then you have an example of teleology. Are these people simply idiots to miss this point ?jwrennie
August 22, 2006
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To Caligula, Read "No Free Lunch"- page 14 last paragraph that continues onto page 15.
Chance as I characterize it thus includes necessity, chance (as it is ordinarily used), and their combination.
Joseph
August 22, 2006
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"It seems like an obvious point doesn’t it dave. If you engineer your trial and error approach properly, then it can get results that you are looking for." Thomas's algorithm shows that a designed set of fitness criteria with random input can create novel and unforseen complexly-specified "entities." however, it is certainly not a "blind" system (unless the fitness algorithms themselves were determine by chance, which in Thomas's case, are not), and it certainly does not answer the huge question about how the initial self-replicating mechanism came to exist, and how the earth (the selection environment) came to have the properties it did. Thomas's test is interesting, and such things may turn out to falsify Dembsky's CSI approach, while showing how ID and RM+NS can work together to form interesting things. Now let's see a test where the fitness criteria themselves are randomly generated.mike1962
August 22, 2006
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First just the word algorithm directly implies intelligence- look it up. Next for DNA replication, mRNA, etc., the cell requires a nucleotide building factory. DNA will not replicate and proteins will not form without one. Nucleotides are not just floating around in the air or water waiting to enter cells when they are required. As far as I know nucleotides ONLY exist in organisms. Evolution may be smarter than Orgel, Dennett and their army of followers, but that isn't really say much. BTW "blind algorithmic processes" is a contradiction of terms. Caligula: Which, in turn, admits the obvious and well-known fallacy in Dembski’s explanatory filter: the gradual, cumulative process of chance AND necessity (selection) needs to be added among valid natural explanations. (In the current version, “chance” and “necessity” are strictly separate, single-step processes.) That is false. Wm. Dembski makes it clear in his writings that chance and necessity are NOT separate. Gravity (necessity) always acts on the roll of the dice (chance). It appears you are as ignorant of ID and the EF as you are about algorithms.Joseph
August 22, 2006
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It seems like an obvious point doesn't it dave. If you engineer your trial and error approach properly, then it can get results that you are looking for. Why do so many people struggle to see the obvious teleology in such an approach ?jwrennie
August 22, 2006
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GOOD LUCK!tb
August 22, 2006
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