Here’s That Monumental Evolution Blunder About Probability Again

_{Cornelius Hunter

March 11, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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Did you think that University of Minnesota professor’s blunder about probability was a one-off? Laplace didn’t rebuke this argument two centuries ago for no good reason—the fallacy has been around forever and evolutionists continue to employ it. The argument’s next appearance is in a forthcoming journal article and the evolutionist doesn’t even try to clean it up. It’s the same old argument that if you toss a coin 500 times there are 2^500, or a one with about 150 zeros after it, different possible sequences of heads and tails. Therefore whatever sequence of heads and tails you end up with had an astronomically tiny—one in 2^500—chance of happening. Such a tiny probability is usually considered to be impossible, and yet it happened. The erroneous conclusion is that tiny probability arguments don’t work, and therefore even though evolution has a tiny probability, there’s really no problem with the theory. As the paper explains: Read more

Comments

The first time I wrote about the second law argument, I said "...at least the underlying principle behind this law simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen." Several people responded by using the above argument to say that extremely improbable things happen all the time, so when I included the same article in my Discovery Institute Press book, I added a footnote
"An unfortunate choice of words; I should have said, the underlying principle behind the second law is that natural forces do not do macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view."
And I have tried to be more careful since then, for example in my 2011 Applied Mathematics Letter article I had the following footnote:
"If we repeat an experiment 2^k times, and define an event to be "simiply describable" (macroscopically describable) if it can be described in m or fewer bits (so that there are 2^m or fewer such events), and "extremely improbable" when it has probability 1/2^n or less, then the probability that any extremely improbable, simply describable event will ever occur is less than 2^(k+m)/2^n. Thus we just have to make sure to choose n to be much larger than k+m. If we flip a billion fair coins, any outcome we get can be said to be extremely improbable, but we only have cause for astonishment if something extremely improbable and simply describable happens, such as "all heads" or "every third coin is tails" or "only every third coin is tails." For practical purposes, almost anything that can be described without resorting to an atom-by-atom (or coin-by-coin) accounting can be considered "macroscopically" describable."
Granville Sewell_{March 12, 2012
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Dr Hunter: I suggest that the problem has to do with the issue of relative statistical weight of clusters of microstates consistent with a given initial situation or macro-state under chance contingency. Indeed, we may easily toss a fair coin say 501 times, or toss a string of such coins. Any one outcome would have equiprobable odds, 1 in 2^501. And, by overwhelming statistical weight, the most likely outcome would be 501 in no particular order, and close to 50-50 H, T. But, if the string were to come up with the first 73 ASCII characters for this post, we would have good reason to be suspicious that whatever happened was not a random process. For the number of ways that string of coins could come out with something otherwise, would be large indeed, but here is but one way to get the particular string we just described, giving it a specific, functional description. This brings to focus, the point that functionally specific complex organisation requires a lot of coordinated complexity, which is evidently constrained by requisites of function in a context. That means that not just any configuration of potential components will do. Only sets that are well matched and consistent with the relevant function. In short, it is reasonable to see that such subsets of the possibilities, will be isolated and relatively rare. For reasonably complex entities, the non-functional states will absolutely dominate. We now see why there is a question of islands of function in seas of non-function, to use a metaphor. The only empirically and analytically plausible means to achieve such FSCO/I is design. But since that cuts across an established school of thought on origins science, it is stoutly resisted. Unfortunately, the error you corrected above is a good case in point on how that so often ends up in fallacies. KFkairosfocus_{March 12, 2012
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So there's no reason to explain the presence of low-probability evolutionary sequences. That means, though, that we do need to explain the absence of complex and improbable events outside the area of life. Just why don't rocks sometimes walk? Or tornadoes make jumbo jets? Why are there never fairies at the bottom of my garden?Jon Garvey_{March 12, 2012
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ba77 @1 Lots of good stuff at Khan. And yet he can't seem to make the intellectual tie-in from his probability stuff (which I presume is good, I haven't looked at your links yet) to apply it to living systems. Why is that? Some kind of intellectual block against applying it to life?Eric Anderson_{March 11, 2012
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This argument is so preposterous on its face that it deserves no serious consideration by anyone with any intellectual integrity. If the argument that "such a tiny probability is usually considered to be impossible, and yet it happened" gets Darwinism off the hook, it might as well be used to argue that a Hello World computer program could be converted into an international grandmaster chess program by stochastic processes. This argument should be included in the dictionary as a quintessential example of a non sequitur.GilDodgen_{March 11, 2012
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Here the 60 MINUTES clip:
Khan Academy: The future of education? http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57394905/khan-academy-the-future-of-education/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
bornagain77_{March 11, 2012
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Dr. Hunter, here is a good site for teaching basic probability;
Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/#probability
They have several coin flipping examples and even a deck of cards example. ,,, Perhaps Darwinists would like to correct the man who created this site on probability theory. He ONLY has three degrees from MIT! The video lessons are neat. Here is one:
Coin Flipping example http://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/v/coin-flipping-example
He has over 3000 lessons, mostly on math, on his site. (He was featured on 60 MINUTES tonight) I like this lesson of his on Euler's Identity:
Euler's Formula and Euler's Identity : Rationale for Euler's Formula and Euler's Identity - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgNtPOgFje0
bornagain77_{March 11, 2012
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