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Of Pulsars and Pauses

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DrREC is not just any Darwinist.  He holds a doctorate and has published on complex matters of biology in peer reviewed journals.  He is not stupid.  That’s why I like to use his examples in my posts.  I am not picking on a defenseless layman.  He’s among the Darwinists’ best and brightest.  So let’s get to his latest pronouncement from on high:

DrREC writes: 

Pulsars often have a complex behavior. But is it specified? If we took the pattern of pulses we detect as the ‘design specification’ — the pattern we search for, we would conclude yes. Totally and undeniably circular. Prove me wrong.

Here’s the problem with DrREC’s reasoning.  He seems to assume (despite being told the contrary numerous times), that any “pattern” can be designated post hoc as “specified.”  He does not seem to understand the most basic concepts of design theory.  The answer is that not any pattern can legitimately be called a specification. 

In a comment to my prior post Bruce David explains the concept nicely as follows:

Dembski’s work builds on that of earlier probability theorists’ who were wrestling with the problem that, for example, any pattern of heads and tails obtained by tossing a coin 100 times is equally improbable, yet intuitively, a pattern of 50 heads followed by 50 tails is in some sense far less probable than a ‘normal’ random pattern. In order to solve this conundrum, they came up with the idea of specification—if the pattern of heads and tails can be described independently of the actual pattern itself, then it is specified, and specified patterns can be said to be non-random. And note, the pattern does not have to be described ahead of time; the requirement is just that it is capable of being described independently of the actual pattern itself. In other words, a normal ‘random’ pattern can only be described by something equivalent to ‘the first toss was heads, the second heads, the third tails,’ and so on, whereas the example above is specified because it can be described as I already have, namely, ’50 heads followed by 50 tails’.

Back to DrREC’s question.  The pulses from the pulsar are indeed highly complex (i.e., improbable).  But they are never specified because they cannot be, as Bruce says, “described independently of the actual pattern itself.”  Therefore if we “took the pattern of pulses we detect as the ‘design specification'” even though that pattern could not be described independently of the actual pattern itself, we would simply be wrong.  That pattern does not conform to the definition of a specification. 

DrREC basically says, “If we call any pattern we find a “specification” then any pattern we find will be a “specification,” and that gets us nowhere.  Well, of course he is right as far as it goes.  But at a deeper and more meaningful level he is wrong, because no one says you can call just any pattern you find a specification.  The pattern must conform to a strict criterion before it can be considered a specification. 

So DrREC, I answered your question.  While we are on the issue of pulses you can answer mine.  Suppose researchers detect a repeating series of 1,126 pulses and pauses of unknown origin.  The pulses and pauses start like this (with one’s conforming to pulses and zero’s conforming to pauses):  110111011111011111110 . . .  After analyzing the series they determine that the zero’s are spaces between numbers and the one’s add up to numbers.  Thus, the excerpt I reproduced would be 2, 3, 5 and 7, the first four prime numbers.  The researchers suddenly realize that the 1,126 pulses and pauses represent the prime numbers between 1 and 100.  (Obviously, this was the series in the movie Contact).

My question for you DrREC is this:  Would you join Arch-atheist, uber-materialist, Darwinist Carl Sagan and conclude that this series is obviously designed by an intelligent agent?  If so, why?  After all, it is a hard fact that this series of 1,126 pulses and pauses is NO MORE IMPROBABLE than any other series of 1,126 pulses and pauses.

Comments
The Voynich Manuscript? Where is the design detection? Are you saying it is natural, or needs to be distinguished from nature. Some independent specifications: 1) On vellum (human product) 2) Iron ink with quill and pen (human product) 3) Conforms to manuscript and illustrations of the period Should we continue with this absurdity?
Two points in response here: 1) You left out the most important independent specification. If the enigmatic text was written on a cave wall with clay from the floor, minus the illustrations, you would still know that someone did it, without even thinking about it. 2) Likewise, when I see bona fide motors (human product), and other mechanisms that perform Boolean logic and mathematical computations (human product), all regulated and constructed from algorithmically compressed, hierarchically nested, multilayer encrypted machine code with error correcting mechanisms (human product), yet there is no way a human could have had any part in building such a system, I feel quite safe in inferring that someone figured it out before we did, with very little thought put into it. Dembski merely provides a mathematical confirmation of what common sense already tells us. Absurd indeed.M. Holcumbrink
December 17, 2011
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F/N 5: caption for Fig I.1 on Voynich (note contrast to points highlighted by DR aboe]: >> Fig. I.1 (iii): Page 64 of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, showing unknown glyphs of unknown meaning (if any) in a string data structure that has statistical patterns reminiscent of natural languages and "word" repetition patterns that may reflect certain East Asian languages. The plant images seem to be by and large composite, but are in effect two-dimensional visual representations and organisation that reflect patterns of plant life. >>kairosfocus
December 17, 2011
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F/N 4: On Voynich, cf here on.kairosfocus
December 17, 2011
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DrREC, Obvioulsy you have serious issues- we were talking about reactions inside of a living organisms and you spaz out and switch to a test tube. You are pathetic. Also Newton's First Rule tells us how to falsify any given design inference. But then again you don't seem to understand how science operates.Joe
December 17, 2011
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F/N 1: I have clipped a key part of the exchanges here. F/N 2: As Dr Rec knew from the beginning, pulsars have long since been explained as rotating neutron stars. Wiki summarises:
A pulsar (portmanteau of pulsating star) is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The radiation can only be observed when the beam of emission is pointing towards the Earth, much the way a lighthouse can only be seen when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense, and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from roughly milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsars. The precise periods of pulsars makes them useful tools. Observations of a pulsar in a binary neutron star system were used to confirm the existence of gravitational radiation. The first extrasolar planets were discovered around a pulsar, PSR B1257+12. Certain types of pulsars rival atomic clocks in their accuracy in keeping time.
In short, the pulses are of low contingency, they are not a candidate to have high contingency under given initial conditions explained. If Dr Rec understands the issues of hi/lo contingency and organisation vs order, he would know that he has no grounds for the objection. We see why S = 0 for pulsars, on a fairly simple explanation. If a pulsar were modulated to emit digits of pi on a code, that would be a strong sign of functionally specific, complex contingency, and would strongly point to design. F/N 3: Durston et al have in fact provided a strong empirical basis to infer that protein families are designed.kairosfocus
December 17, 2011
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DrREC: With short time available, I am trying to cathc up on this thread, possibly connecting with our previos discussions on others. I am not sure what the point of the debate is now. So, just to start, I would restate a couple of importa points here, and kindly ask you to update me about the main problems you see in the discussion here: a) In functionally specified information, and especially dFSCI, the specification can (and indeed is) explicited "post-hoc", from the observed information in the object. The function is defined objectively, and obviously defines a functional subset of the search space (for that specific function). However, the functional target must be computed in some way, because it includes all the sequences that confer the function, as defined. b) In the example of a signal "writing" the digits of pi in binary code, the design inference IMO is completely justified (if the number of digits in the signal is great enough). That would be an example of dFSCI. the digits of p in binary form are a good example of dFSCI, and of "post hoc" specification. c) Still, those who infer design in that case have the duty to seriously consider if the pattern could be generated by some law, that is by some known necessity driven system, even with possible chance contributions. In this case, as far as I know, there is no known physic system that could generate the binary code for the digits of such a fundamental mathemathical constant. So I refute a necessity explanation, at the present state of knowledge. d) Obviously, it remains possible that some physical system, by necessity or necessity + chance, could generate that output, but, as far as I know, there is no logical reason to believe that this is true, and no empirical evidence in favor of that statement. That's why that possibility is not at present a valid scientific explanation of the origin of our signal. Your thoughts on that?gpuccio
December 17, 2011
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Dear DrREC, you don't like examples of human design because you consider them obvious. I disagree: it took me a lot of study, patience of my supervisor and above all intelligence to start programming in a decent way and not with a great 'main' to be changed every time a new issue popped up (does this remember you something?), resulting in a great mess. Anyway, coming back to pulsars, we could detect design without pre-specification if we found an unknown language based on an unknown alphabet made of certain bit arrays.krtgdl
December 17, 2011
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Great, so you agree with Dembski that there is an independence requirement. We all agree. But why on earth do you think the specification has to be known and set out beforehand? I've asked this several times. Is it possible to crack a code that was previously unknown and therefore realize it was designed? All I can see from your various responses is one of two possibilities: either you are saying, yes it is possible because (i) we know it was designed in the first place (that is what it sounded like you were saying, thus my comment in 22), or (ii) we've seen similar systems (in other words, we analogize to our prior experience). So which is it? Do we have to know beforehand the specification, or can we analogize to our prior experience and thus recognize the specification when it is discovered? Let me know which of these two options you support, and then we can continue the discussion. If you support (ii) and not (i), then I apologize for having misunderstood you and withdraw my comment 22.Eric Anderson
December 16, 2011
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Whoa, there pardner. Let's back up and not miss the forest for the trees. Do I have a quote from a Darwinist who says that they have analyzed cellular systems from a standpoint of design and believe the cellular systems meet the specification criteria outlined by intelligent design theorists Dembski, Meyer, and others? Of course not. They don't use that terminology. But they do acknowledge the same point, in different words. Starting with Darwin, who marveled at the wonderous "contrivance" of the eye, the primary goal has not been to deny that life contains complex, functionaly-integrated systems, but to argue that they can come about through natural processes. Dawkins went so far as to define biology as the "study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." What did he mean by that? Precisely that when we look at living systems, the appearance of design jumps out at us. Why is that; what is this appearance of design? It is because of the integrated functional complexity -- precisely one of the examples of complex specified information. It is the fact that in our universal and repeated experience when we see systems like these they turn out to be designed. Dawkins isn't arguing against the appearance of design or that such information doesn't exist in biology (the specification); rather he argues that the appearance need not point exclusively to design because evolution can produce it through long periods of time and chance changes. If I recall correctly, Michael Shermer is the one who has even taken to arguing in debates that, yes, life is designed, but, he adds, the design comes about without a designer, through natural processes. Can complex specified information be calculated? Sure it can (particularly in cases where we are dealing with digital code) and there are interesting cases and good work to be done in identifying and calculating what is contained in life. But that there is a large amount of complex specified information in cells, absolutely; most everyone realizes it is there. The entire OOL enterprise is built upon trying to figure out how the complex specified information -- which everyone recognizes is there -- could have arisen. The recognition that life contains digital code, symbolic representations, complex integrated functional systems is pretty universal. That is complex specified information. So, yes, most Darwinists don't spend their energy arguing against complex specified information in life. Rather they spend their energies trying to explain how it could have arisen through purely natural causes.Eric Anderson
December 16, 2011
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That's funny, I hadn't seen that before! LOL! Yeah, I haven't done anything with my site for years, so this last time around when the bill came due I gave up on it and decided not to renew. Oh, well. At least we now all know where we can get some cheap fioricet if we need it! :)Eric Anderson
December 16, 2011
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That’s really sad for ID
It's not ID at all. It's common sense backed up by unmistakable evidence. ID is science, not common sense. You're bored? How many times have I pointed out that the very nature of extrapolation and inference requires us to reason beyond what we observe? If inference is invalid unless the subject is identical to that with which it is compared, then it is invalid in every case except when we do not need it. You've just invalidated the concept of inference. Next you claim that we draw a target around everything in nature. No, we draw a target around around anything that appears to have come about by a process of arranging symbolic information that exhibits planning and foresight to arrive at a functional result. I don't need to say more than that, such as the amazing attributes or behaviors of any living things. That a thing which reproduces and processes energy is generated from symbolic information is enough. The rest is icing on the cake, lots of it. Reducing function to abstract instructions is intelligent behavior. Yeah, humans do it, and humans are the only one's we've seen do it. But it doesn't look like humans were in on this one. If you think that somehow nullifies the obvious expression of a similar pattern, you're free to make whatever excuses you can to deny whatever evidence you wish. But it's still there. To say that we draw targets around living things is to suggest that the targets weren't already drawn. A crab is no different from the rock it sits on. You're wrong. Every living thing shares a profound, fundamental difference from every non-living thing. Crabs aren't funny-shaped rocks that eat and reproduce and run away from bigger things. Every child knows that. That's the incomprehensible, twisted aberration of reason you are forced to accept when you commit to a conclusion that is diagonally opposed to the evidence. UB has it right. Instantiation of semiotic information transfer = intelligence. There is no alternative explanation, real, hypothetical, or imaginary. That's a lifeline from reality. Grab it or don't.ScottAndrews2
December 16, 2011
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"Those “natural” processes you speak could very well be artificial processes." Yep. The reactions I saw in my test tube could be mediated by fairies. Thanks for reminding us again that design inferences are unfalsifiable.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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By the way, Eric Anderson, I think you forgot to pay the bill on your website: "http://www.evolutiondebate.info/" When I click your name, it goes to "Buy FIORICET pills online without a prescription." Illegal sales of barbiturates might be frowned upon here....DrREC
December 16, 2011
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Could you provide a reference where a "Darwinist" acknowledges a specification by a designer in life? I'm really puzzled at the who the hell these "so many evolutionists admit it as a given" are. This is almost a fourth grade playground lie you tell the kid you want to do something idiotic-everyone's doing it. Why won't you? All the other Darwinists are admitting design specifications...come on, just admit it....please.... "Specification, in terms of functional complex specified information, is really a no brainer" So, in a few days, fsci has gone from being a calculation to a "no brainer" Next I'll here the "only an idiot would deny it." Is this science to you? Next paper, I'll write "this is a no brainer, proof not required." Wow. Just Wow. You're wildly equivocating on the use of the word specification. At best. This is the oddest "no, your peers disagree with you" bluff I've ever read.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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"the only way we can ever know if something was designed is if we already know that what we are looking for is designed." No, for the umpteenth time, if it is INDEPENDENTLY specified (pi, prime numbers) in my pulsat example, that is fine. I've walked through how fsci calculations specify a design post-hoc in the detection of design in explicit detail above. No one seems to want to deal with that, and has resorted to broad chest thumping rhetoric. Don't you just SEE the design? Lol.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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The Voynich Manuscript? Where is the design detection? Are you saying it is natural, or needs to be distinguished from nature. Some independent specifications: 1) On vellum (human product) 2) Iron ink with quill and pen (human product) 3) Conforms to manuscript and illustrations of the period Should we continue with this absurdity?DrREC
December 16, 2011
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What is amazing? Can you give me a link to the discussion you'd like me to respond to?DrREC
December 16, 2011
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I should add that it is funny that so much energy is being spent denying that there is specification in living cells. Specification, in terms of functional complex specified information, is really a no brainer as it relates to many cellular systems. Indeed, most Darwinists and other materialists admit the specification because it is so obviously there. What they then spend their energies on is attempting to show that the specification isn't really that improbable (inevitability theorists), or that it comes about through some emergent process (emergent theorists), or alternatively, that while wildly improbably "evolution" can overcome it through the magic of lots of time and errors in replication (Dawkins et al.). Don't get me wrong, I love a good discussion about specification. Just seems funny that it is being so strenuously denied when so many evolutionists admit it as a given.Eric Anderson
December 16, 2011
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amazingUpright BiPed
December 16, 2011
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DrREC:
Funny everyone keeps coming with analogies where the design is not in question! It is almost as if they assume design, and proceed from there.
Heeeello! We are showing you examples of how design is inferred. These aren't just unrelated "analogies." These are live examples of design inference. Set aside for a moment your philosophical bias against examples, analogies, whatever and think through this for a moment. Under your logic, the only way we can ever know if something was designed is if we already know that what we are looking for is designed. That is entirely circular and, pardon, but frankly absurd. That would mean that it is impossible to ever discover if something is designed. Because in order to discover that, we must have already known the design we were looking for. The fact of the matter is design is inferred all the time. The only reason you are hung up is that it happens to be in life this time, which, apparently, is philosophically unpalatable.Eric Anderson
December 16, 2011
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DrREC:
I haven’t seen an answer. Without a prior or independent specification (pi or prime numbers), how could we tell natural pulsars from alien signals?
SA2:
Don’t count out, “Just look at it, it must have been designed.”
DrREC:
That’s really sad for ID
Lets go back to the Voynich Manuscript. How is it that *you* don’t know what it says, or even if it says anything at all, yet *you* know for a fact that someone did it? You can just look at it and know.M. Holcumbrink
December 16, 2011
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I didn’t make an analogy.
I apologize. I didn't realize you had answered my coding sequence question. I'll look back over it. I thought you wrote about language and translation.Petrushka
December 16, 2011
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"Was your post pre-specified?" Yes, or at least independently. By the rules english grammar and syntax. "Do you have the schematics for your computer? Can you tell me right now how every circuit was specified?" No, but I'm sure someone at apple does. And again, with the endless human designs. Bored now. "Now you’re saying that you’ll believe it if you see the specification in advance of the implementation." Or independently. Or in any way that doesn't draw a target around something in nature, infer that to be the specification, declare it is specified, and deduce design. "Your whole pulsar tangent is one giant strawman. No one is going about randomly trying to infer design to anything and everything for no reason." SETI or NASA might be interested. I think it is right up your alley. Aren't you design detectors? "Don’t count out, “Just look at it, it must have been designed." That's really sad for ID.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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"Dr REC I have not followed this conversation closely, but I gave you an instance where we have nothing whatsoever to do with creating any specification, because that sepcification is built into the system itself. It’s also irreducibly complex. Yet you walked from that conversation." You say you haven't followed the conversation closely, but then chide me for walking away. By the way, you and Barry Arrington almost NEVER answer my questions. It isn't a one sided cross-ex. You'll forgive me-these threads are difficult to follow, terminating every so often, and my posts have been spread over three or four new threads. So what was this example.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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Was your post pre-specified? Do you have the schematics for your computer? Can you tell me right now how every circuit was specified? Now you're saying that you'll believe it if you see the specification in advance of the implementation. With a wave of the hand you have dismissed the possibility that anything of unobserved origin was designed. Your whole pulsar tangent is one giant strawman. No one is going about randomly trying to infer design to anything and everything for no reason. You're arguing against the design inference by applying where it obviously doesn't fit. That's because you have no valid objection or alternative where it does fit. Don't count out, "Just look at it, it must have been designed." No insult intended, but that's the voice of common sense. It's not always right, but common sense plus abundant evidence always beats a hand-waving explanation of 'something happened, we don't know what except that we have ruled out intelligence.'ScottAndrews2
December 16, 2011
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Dr REC I have not followed this conversation closely, but I gave you an instance where we have nothing whatsoever to do with creating any specification, because that sepcification is built into the system itself. It's also irreducibly complex. Yet you walked from that conversation.Upright BiPed
December 16, 2011
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"As opposed to what, using examples in which design is in question? Or examples of things that don’t appear designed?" Yeah. Seriously, the constant insult laced posts that go "Hey look at this human-designed object. Only a moron couldn't tell it was deigned." get old fast. It also isn't really what you guys are trying to do. You're trying to make a design inference, based on ruling out natural possibilities through the use of improbability+specification. At least my pulsar example was an attempt to query this. I haven't seen an answer. Without a prior or independent specification (pi or prime numbers), how could we tell natural pulsars from alien signals? If a researcher took a complex pulsar sequence, fit parameters to it, and declared that the specification, and then measured how well the pulsar fit that specification, does that prove the pulsar is specified (designed)? Why is this so obviously wrong in the pulsar case, but so right for you? "Most designed things don’t have independent specifications that one can produce or refer to. From where have you invented this requirement?" On the contrary, I think all designed things would have specifications. I'm sure my computer, couch car were all pre-specified.DrREC
December 16, 2011
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As opposed to what, using examples in which design is in question? Or examples of things that don't appear designed? Most designed things don't have independent specifications that one can produce or refer to. From where have you invented this requirement? Your position seems to be that if you have this thing and you don't know whether it was designed, comparing it to outputs of known design is an inherently invalid approach. You also suggest that design is such a shockingly unimaginable phenomenon that it must be seen to be believed. Astoundingly, you do not apply this same skepticism to vague, unformed hypotheses of self-organization. Living things, from the molecular level up, follow the very same patterns as any number of design technologies, except that they appear far more advanced. They do not follow any known patterns of self-organization. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't stop it from drinking sand. And you can't use logic to convince someone to respect logic.ScottAndrews2
December 16, 2011
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DrREC, Those "natural" processes you speak could very well be artificial processes. Also there isn't any "punting to abiogenesis" as much as it is cowardice for starting with that which needs explaining in the first place. So perhaps you need to figure out your problem.Joe
December 16, 2011
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I can tell I've made a salient point when you punt to "solve abiogenesis." I showed you complex protein origination by natural processes. What is the fcsi of the de novo protein. It isn't short!DrREC
December 16, 2011
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