Orgel and 500 Coins

_{Barry Arrington

November 25, 2014

Intelligent Design}

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In his 1973 book The Origins of Life Leslie Orgel wrote: “Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.” (189).

In my post On “Specified Complexity,” Orgel and Dembski I demonstrated that in this passage Orgel was getting at the exact same concept that Dembski calls “specified complexity.” In a comment to that post “Robb” asks:

500 coins, all heads, and therefore a highly ordered pattern.
What would Orgel say — complex or not?

Orgel said that crystals, even though they display highly ordered patterns, lack complexity. Would he also say that the highly ordered pattern of “500 coins; all heads” lacks complexity?

In a complexity analysis, the issue is not whether the patterns are “highly ordered.” The issue is how the patterns came to be highly ordered. If a pattern came to be highly ordered as a result of natural processes (e.g., the lawlike processes that result in crystal formation), it is not complex. If a pattern came to be highly ordered in the very teeth of what we would expect from natural processes (we can be certain that natural chance/law processes did not create the 500 coin pattern), the pattern is complex.

Complexity turns on contingency. The pattern of a granite crystal is not contingent. Therefore, it is not complex. The “500 coins; all heads” pattern is highly contingent. Therefore, it is complex.

What would Orgel say? We cannot know what Orgel would say. We can say that if he viewed the “500 coins; all heads” pattern at a very superficial level (it is just an ordered pattern), he might say it lacks complexity, in which case he would have been wrong. If he viewed the “500 coin; all heads” pattern in terms of the extreme level of contingency displayed in the pattern, he would have said the pattern is complex, and he would have been right.

About one thing we can be absolutely certain. Orgel would have known without the slightest doubt that the “500 coin; all heads” pattern was far beyond the ability of chance/law forces, and he would therefore have made a design inference.

Comments

And in the case of 500 heads, there are processes that can lead to them very easily, e.g. the Mabinogion sheep.
And in the case of Mabinogion sheep we have artificial selection.Joe_{November 25, 2014
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And probability is still a complexity measure and keith's ignorance still means nothing. And if complex means : not easy to understand or explain , then that cylindrical crystal of pure silicon would be complex, duh. Nice job, chief- you shot yourself in the foot on the way to that own goalJoe_{November 25, 2014
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Barry:
In his 1973 book The Origins of Life Leslie Orgel wrote: “Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.” (189).
That's right. Orgel, unlike Dembski, is using 'complex' in the way that English speakers do:
com·plex adjective \käm-?pleks, k?m-?, ?käm-?\ : having parts that connect or go together in complicated ways : not easy to understand or explain : not simple [from merriam-webster.com]
By that definition, crystals lack complexity.
In my post On “Specified Complexity,” Orgel and Dembski I demonstrated that in this passage Orgel was getting at the exact same concept that Dembski calls “specified complexity.”
No, because unlike Orgel, Dembski doesn't use 'complex' in its ordinary English sense. I explained this in the other thread using the example of a cylindrical silicon crystal of the kind used to make integrated circuits:
Barry, By Dembski’s own equation, something exhibits CSI/specified complexity if P(T|H) is sufficiently low. P(T|H) is a probability, not a measure of complexity. A cylindrical crystal of pure silicon is not complex at all, yet it is highly improbable by purely natural processes. That’s why we have to grow them to make silicon wafers instead of just mining them somewhere. Dembski’s equation would therefore attribute CSI/specified complexity to such a crystal, despite its simplicity. “Complex specified information” is really “improbable (under natural processes) specified information”. “CSI” is a misnomer.
Barry:
In a complexity analysis, the issue is not whether the patterns are “highly ordered.” The issue is how the patterns came to be highly ordered. If a pattern came to be highly ordered as a result of natural processes (e.g., the lawlike processes that result in crystal formation), it is not complex.
You are using Dembski's definition, not Orgel's. By Dembski's definition, the cylindrical crystal of pure silicon is complex. By Orgel's definition, which is the ordinary English definition, the silicon crystal is simple, not complex. By Dembski's silly definition, something can be both simple and complex.keith s_{November 25, 2014
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Think I may modify this to permit 'coins' with more than one side :)Mung_{November 25, 2014
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Bob O'H:
More generally, any stochastic process on the number of heads with all heads and all tails as absorbing boundaries (i.e. once you’re in that state you can’t leave) will inevitably reach one of the absorbing states in finite time (if you have a finite number of heads, and if it’s possible to get from any state to any other).
Do you mean for example a system that tosses all 500 coins at once in repeated attempts to have them show up all heads? How often do you expect to see that in your lifetime? # allh.rb def tosser coin, sequence_length sequence_length.times do |i| return if coin.sample == 'T' puts "#{i+1}: HEADS of #{sequence_length}!" exit if i + 1 == sequence_length end end coin = %w[H T] begin tosser(coin, ARGV[0].to_i) end while true You can put in the number of coins to toss on the command line. I used 20 and it didn't take too long. Try 500 and let us know: $ruby allh.rb 500 Think I may modify this to permit ‘coins’ with more than one side :)Mung_{November 25, 2014
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Eric, even in your examples we can exclude chance and law. Both of your examples (rigged coin; stamping machine) implicate design.Barry Arrington_{November 25, 2014
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Barry, interesting post. Just one caveat, or perhaps clarification: Everyone needs to realize, or it needs to be made explicit, that (i) you are talking about fair coins (meaning they have a probability of falling heads 50% and tails 50%), and (ii) the example assumes no other law-like process was involved. Specifically, if I saw 500 heads tossed in a row, I might well conclude that there was something specific about the weighting of the coins that caused it. Or if I saw 500 heads lying in a row at the US mint, I might well conclude that it was not due to someone's particular design (though, yes, it could have been), but more likely was simply the outcome of how the machine stamped the coins. Perhaps not the best examples, but you get my point. When we see repetitive, simple order, it is most likely the result of natural laws, rather than design. What allows the coin example to work, is if we assume such natural laws were not in place, thus leaving just design v. chance. This nuance is part of the confusion that sometimes results from the coin-toss examples, which is why I think some of the examples (including Sal's) have not been as effective. Better than 500 heads in a row might be the first x number of prime numbers in binary or something less repetitive and less simple. Anyway, I just want to head (no pun intended) this off at the outset so that no-one jumps on the thread and gets off track on the possibility of necessity causing the 500 coins in a row.Eric Anderson_{November 25, 2014
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PS: Neat-o on the new feature, complete with count-down!kairosfocus_{November 25, 2014
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BA, the pattern of the individual mineral crystal, but the randomly scattered complex matrix is quite complex. Pardon, I have just a moment, today is even more of an adventure than I thought. KFkairosfocus_{November 25, 2014
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In a complexity analysis, the issue is not whether the patterns are “highly ordered.” The issue is how the patterns came to be highly ordered.
And in the case of 500 heads, there are processes that can lead to them very easily, e.g. the Mabinogion sheep. More generally, any stochastic process on the number of heads with all heads and all tails as absorbing boundaries (i.e. once you're in that state you can't leave) will inevitably reach one of the absorbing states in finite time (if you have a finite number of heads, and if it's possible to get from any state to any other).Bob O'H_{November 25, 2014
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