Guest Post: Design Detection

_{Barry Arrington

December 10, 2014

Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Paul Giem provides the following guest post today:

The following three pictures were made to represent trays with 560 coins with either white (heads) or black (tails) showing. At least one of them was created by shaking coins and then spreading them out on a table (actually multiple shakes of 20 or so coins) and copying the pattern of heads and tails produced. Which one or ones are they, and why? Were the ones, if any, that were not done by this process designed, and if so by whom, and using what method?

Comments

Mung: Stop being circular! :)gpuccio_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
10:03 AM
10
10
03
AM
PDT}

Further evidence that design does not and cannot create an objective nested hierarchy and that only unguided evolution can.Mung_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
10:02 AM
10
10
02
AM
PDT}

The sample size is just too small to infer design without assuming the conclusion.Mung_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
09:57 AM
9
09
57
AM
PDT}

Paul: Very good example. Of course, the designer of number three was a little capricious, inverting colors in that way! At first, I could not detect the "chance" word. What a bad design detector I am. :) However, we remain irremediably biased IDists: this is obviously a case of Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, in all its glory.gpuccio_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
09:51 AM
9
09
51
AM
PDT}

The 3 patterns have the same probability of randomly occurring = 0.2649734913689x10**-168. So there is no difference between them. EOIronyniwrad_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
09:10 AM
9
09
10
AM
PDT}

A truly intelligent agent wouldn't have left that one black dot in between the random pattern that has the appearance of design similar to the English words "due" and "to", so we can conclude that image three is obviously not intelligently designed.liljenborg_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
08:47 AM
8
08
47
AM
PDT}

I like the imagery. When viewing the imagery, some thoughts occurred to me. 1) Wouldn't it be interesting if, instead of a random (or near random) arrangement of the black and white circles, that a fractal pattern emerged upon shaking? 2) It's a good thing that you didn't choose red and green for the colors (despite the season!) as it would make it impossible for those who are red/green color blind to detect the "design" in the third image. Of course, if the site is US Section 508 compliant, you wouldn't have that issue! (maybe a moot point). But I wonder if the concept (inability to detect design due to "defect" [for lack of better term]) isn't apropos on a grander scale?ciphertext_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
06:39 AM
6
06
39
AM
PDT}

Anticipating ... By who? A human who understands English But I'll also guess this kind of response: "Give me the FSCI calculation for each of those images. Failing that, ID cannot determine which one is designed." ... or something like that. In my view, (which may conflict with others' here) we recognize the information string first through observation, pattern matching to references (English language) and discover a symbol set and, in this case, a message. The information has a sender and since we understand the message, we can infer the receiver: People interested in design vs chance arguments. The message is intended as an ironic comment for that audience - so obviously, it's informational and communicative. It has symbol, medium (the rectangle and coin layout), translation, sender, receiver and functional operation in the end (illustrating a point in this post is its function).Silver Asiatic_{December 10, 2014
December
12
Dec
10
10
2014
06:36 AM
6
06
36
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 … 3 4 5

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply