Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The “Skeptical” Zone, Where You Can Be Skeptical of Anything (Except Currently Fashionable Intellectual Dogmas)

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For those of you who do not know, some months ago Elizabeth Liddle started the website known as The Skeptical Zone (TSZ). The site has a sort of symbiotic relationship with UD, because many, if not most, of the posts there key off our posts here.

Not only does TSZ have a name that invokes a skeptical turn of mind, it also has a motto apparently intended to bolster that attitude: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” The motto is taken from Oliver Cromwell’s August 5, 1650 letter to the synod of the Church of Scotland urging them to break their alliance with royalist forces.

Now with a name and a motto like that, one might think the site is home to iconoclastic non-conformists bent on disrupting the status quo. But you would be wrong. I just finished pursuing the articles that have been posted at TSZ during the last six months. Among the regular posters there I found not a single article that even mildly criticized (far less expressed skepticism toward) a single dogma one would expect to be held by the denizens of the faculty lounge at a typical university.

Atheism. It’s true

Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Fact beyond the slightest doubt

Philosophical materialism. Check

It seems that the regular posters at TSZ are skeptical of everything but the received wisdom, accepted conventions and cherished dogmas of the academic left. Perhaps they should change the name of the site ever so slightly to The “Skeptical” Zone. The irony quotes would make the name more honest.

Here’s a clue to the TSZ posters: If you want to be a real skeptic, perhaps you should challenge the beliefs of the secular elite that dominate our universities instead of marching in lockstep with them. The true skeptics of the early twenty-first century are those willing to take on the dogmas of the academic elite, people like Bill Dembski, Michael Behe, and Jonathan Wells.

The posters at The Skeptical Zone are skeptical alright.  They are skeptical of skeptics.  As for their motto, they certainly think it is possible that someone might be mistaken – anyone who disagrees with them or questions their deeply held beliefs.

Why don’t the posters at TSZ see the glaringly obvious irony of their enterprise? I was thinking about this question when I ran across a post by Matt Emerson over at FT. Emerson writes about how the dogmas of secularism act as a type of “revelation” that boxes in thinking in a way secularist thinkers probably don’t even perceive at a conscious level.  Emerson writes:

Even among those who declare no connection with God, reason operates under what amounts to a kind of revelation. These skeptics don’t conceive of revelation in the same way that I do as a Catholic, but for many, the ultimate source of an epistemological “guide” does not matter: Certain perceived facts, or certain foundational positions, hold the same thetical value for them as the Bible does for many Christians. For these men and women, as for the medievals, it might be technically possible to reason “outside” these givens, but why would they? To ask them to reason as if those givens were not true would be akin to asking a Christian to reason apart from the Incarnation. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Comments
'Yet no one can tell us how many mutations it takes to get an upright biped from a knuckle-walker/ quadraped. No one even knows what DNA sequences are involved.' Just because they believe they are scions of knuckle-draggers, doesn't mean they have to know the whys and wherefors, Joe. Don't be pedantic about their science.Axel
May 2, 2013
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From a quote of Dawkins in Optimus' #180: '....."Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist"’. Don't take it too hard, Richard. What you lose intellectually on the swings, you may well gain on the roundabouts. Life basically IS unfair, what with matter ruling the roost, and its something we, materialists, must habituate ourselves to.Axel
May 2, 2013
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petrushka sez:
Evolution in one of the best understood and most studied phenomena in science.
Really? Yet no one can tell us how many mutations it takes to get an upright biped from a knuckle-walker/ quadraped. No one even knows what DNA sequences are involved. No one seems to be able to answer any questions about this allegedly "best understood and most studied phenomena in science". Why is that?Joe
April 10, 2013
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Lizzie gets is wrong, again:
Ergo, we don’t know whether we need to infer either a Designer OR multiverses.
A multiverse does not exclude a designer or designers.Joe
April 10, 2013
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My understanding is that bit-parity algorithms are in fact used in DNA error detection and correction.Eric Anderson
April 8, 2013
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Various RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) configurations are also good examples of what might appear to be "junk" data. I'd be curious to know whether research has been done on DNA with respect to data being "striped" across disparate sections of DNA or whether something like parity bits are used to help rebuild lost data. I'd think this would be the sort of research that an inference to design might suggest.Phinehas
April 8, 2013
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Eric @325,
"I think there is a general principle at work here: The more independent and self-sustaining a system needs to be, the more redundancy, backup, protection, and contingent systems it will incorporate. We know this is true in remote and/or mission-critical engineering systems."
Exactly. That's a fine example of design thinking, and is more applicable than anything the assumption of "unguided" processes can say about biology.Chance Ratcliff
April 8, 2013
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Footnote for #324, The emergence of a cecal valve in podarcis sicula looks to represent a case of contingent function and robustness.
"Examination of the lizard’s digestive tracts revealed something even more surprising. Eating more plants caused the development of new structures called cecal valves, designed to slow the passage of food by creating fermentation chambers in the gut, where microbes can break down the difficult to digest portion of plants. Cecal valves, which were found in hatchlings, juveniles and adults on Pod Mrcaru, have never been reported for this species, including the source population on Pod Kopiste." -- Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution After Introduction To A New Home
Might the species have still appeared viable if the coding segments required for the cecal valve construction and the accompanying environmental response mechanisms were knocked out?
"These structures actually occur in less than 1 percent of all known species of scaled reptiles,” says Irschick. “Our data shows that evolution of novel structures can occur on extremely short time scales. Cecal valve evolution probably went hand-in-hand with a novel association between the lizards on Pod Mrcaru and microorganisms called nematodes that break down cellulose, which were found in their hindguts."
P.S. I'm wondering what the essential difference is between Rapid Evolution and Phenotypic Plasticity. Rapid Evolution What is Phenotypic Plasticity and Why is it ImportantChance Ratcliff
April 8, 2013
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Chance, great thoughts. Particularly the system protection idea. What about information and systems that are able to fight disease. There are lots of things in this area that would only come into play contingently. Also, what about the cell's uncanny ability to identify and "fix" mutation errors, protein folding problems, etc. The information for such detection and correction has to exist somewhere in the files. You could get by for quite a while without it, but eventually it would catch up to you. So without such systems the organism would not be viable over many generations. I think there is a general principle at work here: The more independent and self-sustaining a system needs to be, the more redundancy, backup, protection, and contingent systems it will incorporate. We know this is true in remote and/or mission-critical engineering systems. It's hard to think of a more independent and self-sustaining system than a living organism that is expected to thrive and self propagate over the course of millions of years and in the face of myriad contingent environmental challenges. It is quite possible -- nay, even reasonable to expect -- that living systems incorporate significant amounts of such systems. Anyone pushing the idea that living systems -- systems that are incredibly sophisticated, incredibly robust, incredibly faithful reproducers, and incredibly capable of adapting to changing conditions -- are loaded with 'swaths of junk' speaks less to the reality of such swaths and more to the individual's engineering naivete.Eric Anderson
April 8, 2013
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Eric and Joe @323 and 321, good points -- redundancy and contingent functionality are good possible explanations for "non-functional" segments of DNA. The same is true for software, namely operating systems. There are loads of files such as drivers for various hardware components that are part of the installation but not in use, because the hardware that they support may not be present in a given system. So what's to be said about files on a hard drive that are never accessed, are they "non-functional", or contingently functional? I prefer the latter, since the former term is misleading. This is just one reason why perfectly valid data might not be in use on a given system -- because the condition that would require its use does not necessarily occur, it occurs conditionally. There are other examples. Later versions of Microsoft Windows have a feature called "System Protection" that optionally backs up certain changed files and registry settings, so that in the event of an update failure, the system can be rolled back to a previous valid configuration. This feature can be turned on or off. It is part of the operating systems robustness but not necessary for the system to function in the first place. The entire feature could be wiped from the system -- a significant swath of files and supporting features could be done away, without compromising the function of the system, that is until a certain type of failure occurred. If a system was never updated, or if an update never failed, the feature would never be missed. It's significant worth would only be realized given a specific contingency. Many other examples could be suggested as to why segments of DNA might be present but not in use. The assumption of "junk" is entirely unhelpful. I too suspect that some "junk" DNA could be accounted for by considering the engineering principles of robustness and redundancy, which by the way is something that the assumption of design would suggest, not an assumption of random cobbling.Chance Ratcliff
April 8, 2013
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Joe: Absolutely right, redundancy is often ignored by knock-out experiments and similar such claims. Further, there are hundreds (thousands?) of processes that only function at particular stages, for example processes that build the initial organism in the first place. When your ears, eyes, teeth, etc. were all initially growing in the womb, something had to be controlling all those processes. Now that they are fully built, you could perhaps knock out the genetic material responsible for the initial construction and not notice anything problematic. Also, it is certainly possible that some defects would not show up until multiple generations down the road. Also, it is possible some genetic material is only needed to deal with certain contingent environmental conditions and would only come into play in special circumstances, thus being missed in the experimental review. Some people also ignore the fact that some portion of DNA is structural, rather than coding-based. It also ignores the possibility of front-loading. To be sure, there may be some non-functional portions of genomes. But given our current limited state of knowledge about cellular function, organismal development, and what contributes to long-term stability across multiple generations, the oft-claimed "vast swathes" of non-function is little more than an ignorance-of-the-gaps assertion. In any case, the trajectory of the evidence can only proceed toward more known function, not less. Those clinging desperately to non-function as confirmation of their beliefs are standing squarely on the wrong side of the evidentiary trajectory.Eric Anderson
April 8, 2013
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Joe:
You could literally remove over half of the stuff in the system and it would function just fine- made little of no difference of its preformance.
Short-run. Long-run in a world of MTBF, and that's a whole 'nother story. KFkairosfocus
April 8, 2013
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Lizzie sez:
But in any case we know there are vast swathes of genomes that do nothing, because if you remove them, it makes little or no difference to the phenotype.
I worked for a computer company that made circuit boards with redundant circuits and their systems had redundant circuit boards. You could literally remove over half of the stuff in the system and it would function just fine- made little of no difference of its preformance. That does NOT mean all the redundant circuits do nothing. Talk about a totally clueless person.Joe
April 8, 2013
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William J Murray: That has nothing to do with the debate. The debate is about the ability to fine-tune searches (one way or another) towards the construction of complex, specified, functional machinery.There is no known commodity that can do this other than intelligence. Lizzie:
Yes, there is. We know that a smooth high-dimensioned fitness landscape can do it.
That is nothing but a crock of unsupportable nonsense. Geez Willaim, why don't you just ask Lizzie how we "know" such a thing and ask her to present the evidence for it.Joe
April 8, 2013
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EA: Passed by and looked at it. It looks clean and by your token is a first impression summary by one seeking to genuinely understand. That's worth something. Why not look and make an update if you think it helpful. My contact is through my handle. KFkairosfocus
April 7, 2013
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WJM @312: Well said. There are really two issues at play here. OOL or OIR (Origin of Initial Replicator). Someone argues that there is no evidence for a self-replicating polymer under early earth conditions. Elizabeth counters with, "Suppose a self-replicating polymer . . ." I agree with you that this is a case of solving a problem by assuming it away or at least assuming that it may one day be solved. We just need more time, the thinking goes -- the old promissory note of materialistic evolution presented to the unsuspecting public, now faded, worn and long overdue, but on which few seem to notice the due date has quietly been surreptitiously crossed out and replaced with a much later date . . . Information. But there is another, more important, elephant in the room. Even if you have a self-replicating polymer, you don't get information. Elizabeth seems enamored with the power of natural selection, proclaiming with the zeal of a televangelist that once we get that self-replicating polymer, then, hey, anything is possible. Yet there is precisely zero evidence (nay, there is a lot of contrary evidence) that a simple self-replicating polymer can ever turn into more than a simple self-replicating polymer through purely natural and material processes. You don't just get to invoke new complex specified information through the magic of mutation and selection. So Dembski's real point: conservation of information, is not only not solved by assuming a self-replicating polymer; it is not even addressed. You can have all the self-replicating entities you want. You still don't get to 'buy' information for free. The information has to be provided from somewhere in order to navigate the search space. ----- Incidentally, the whole self-replication thing as a source of new information is a red herring anyway. But that is perhaps a topic for another thread another time . . .Eric Anderson
April 7, 2013
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Bornagain77 thank you for this exposé. I have worked my way through the articles and things have become clearer to me. And of course I agree with you that this is all very important. The ultimate reality of materialists is not so 'no-nonsensical' as they would like to believe. Maybe that's why the materialists on this forum are so silent on this subject.Box
April 7, 2013
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kf @307: Of course, I'd be honored. It is probably fine to post it as is, whether you want to make it a post for discussion or link to it as a general resource. Alternatively, if there is value in having it function as a more current primer, I'd probably want to at least read through it again and make any updates, if necessary. It's been a decade and I and was quite new to the design debate at that point, although I'd like to think that the fundamental issues I laid out are still spot on. Ironically, I guess it shows that it is quite possible for someone who is sincerely interested to grasp the fundamentals and the nuances very quickly -- a sad commentary on those who have been involved in the debate for years and are still unable (or unwilling) to accurately represent what intelligent design is.Eric Anderson
April 7, 2013
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WJM @ 312 quoting Liddle: chemically plausible science fiction
Blind Watchmaker Evolution: Chemically plausible science fiction... Except that it's not plausible.CentralScrutinizer
April 7, 2013
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Box why does everyone want to go the 'technical' route?,, Sigh!,, as to,,,
Are they saying that when there is a ‘conscious subject’ in the room, checking the measurements, that at that point the wave packet collapses?
As counter-intuitive as it is, yes, that is what 'they' are saying. (Actually it what the double slit and the bell inequality, among other experiments, are 'saying'),,, Here is a clip of a talk in which Alain Aspect talks about the infamous debate between Einstein and Bohr, and the failure of 'local realism', or the failure of materialism, to explain reality:
Quantum Entanglement – The Failure Of Local Realism - Materialism - Alain Aspect - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4744145
This following study adds to John Bell's and Alain Aspect's work in Quantum Mechanics and solidly refutes the 'hidden variable' argument that has been used by materialists to try to get around the Theistic implications of the instantaneous 'spooky action at a distance' found in quantum mechanics.
Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show - July 2009 Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm
(of note: hidden variables were postulated to remove the need for 'spooky' forces, as Einstein termed them — forces that act instantaneously at great distances, thereby breaking the most cherished rule of relativity theory, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.) These following experiments goes a step further than the Bell inequality,,,
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640 “I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications.
Preceding quote taken from this following video;
Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness - A New Measurement - Bernard Haisch, Ph.D (Shortened version of entire video with notes in description of video) http://vimeo.com/37517080
Here is further work in this area that extends the integrity of the results:
A simple approach to test Leggett’s model of nonlocal quantum correlations - 2009 Excerpt of Abstract: Bell's strong sentence "Correlations cry out for explanations" remains relevant,,,we go beyond Leggett's model, and show that one cannot ascribe even partially defined individual properties to the components of a maximally entangled pair. http://www.mendeley.com/research/a-simple-approach-to-test-leggetts-model-of-nonlocal-quantum-correlations/ Violation of Leggett inequalities in orbital angular momentum subspaces - 2010 Main results. We extend the violation of Leggett inequalities to the orbital angular momentum (OAM) state space of photons, which is associated with their helical wavefronts. We define our measurements in a Bloch sphere for OAM and measure the Leggett parameter LN (where N is the number of settings for the signal photon) as we change the angle ? (see figure). We observe excellent agreement with quantum mechanical predictions (red line), and show a violation of five and six standard deviations for N = 3 and N = 4, respectively. http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/12/123007
It is interesting to note that Leggett himself, an atheist, though he himself was instrumental in devising the experiment, refused to accept the conclusion of his own experiment he had set up to try to prove the conclusions of quantum mechanics wrong:
A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it? - 2008 Excerpt: Leggett doesn’t believe quantum mechanics is correct, and there are few places for a person of such disbelief to now turn. But Leggett decided to find out what believing in quantum mechanics might require. He worked out what would happen if one took the idea of nonlocality in quantum mechanics seriously, by allowing for just about any possible outside influences on a detector set to register polarizations of light. Any unknown event might change what is measured. The only assumption Leggett made was that a natural form of realism hold true; photons should have measurable polarizations that exist before they are measured. With this he laboriously derived a new set of hidden variables theorems and inequalities as Bell once had. But whereas Bell’s work could not distinguish between realism and locality, Leggett’s did. The two could be tested. When Aspelmeyer returned to Vienna, he grabbed the nearest theorist he could find, Tomasz Paterek, whom everyone calls “Tomek.” Tomek was at the IQOQI on fellowship from his native Poland and together, they enlisted Simon Gröblacher, Aspelmeyer’s student. With Leggett’s assistance, the three spent six months painfully checking his calculations. They even found a small error. Then they set about recasting the idea, with a few of the other resident theorists, into a form they could test. When they were done, they went to visit Anton Zeilinger. The experiment wouldn’t be too difficult, but understanding it would. It took them months to reach their tentative conclusion: If quantum mechanics described the data, then the lights’ polarizations didn’t exist before being measured. Realism in quantum mechanics would be untenable. ,,, Leggett’s theory was more powerful than Bell’s because it required that light’s polarization be measured not just like the second hand on a clock face, but over an entire sphere. In essence, there were an infinite number of clock faces on which the second hand could point. For the experimenters this meant that they had to account for an infinite number of possible measurement settings. So Zeilinger’s group rederived Leggett’s theory for a finite number of measurements. There were certain directions the polarization would more likely face in quantum mechanics. This test was more stringent. In mid-2007 Fedrizzi found that the new realism model was violated by 80 orders of magnitude; the group was even more assured that quantum mechanics was correct. Leggett agrees with Zeilinger that realism is wrong in quantum mechanics, but when I asked him whether he now believes in the theory, he answered only “no” before demurring, “I’m in a small minority with that point of view and I wouldn’t stake my life on it.” For Leggett there are still enough loopholes to disbelieve. I asked him what could finally change his mind about quantum mechanics. Without hesitation, he said sending humans into space as detectors to test the theory. In space there is enough distance to exclude communication between the detectors (humans), and the lack of other particles should allow most entangled photons to reach the detectors unimpeded. Plus, each person can decide independently which photon polarizations to measure. If Leggett’s model were contradicted in space, he might believe. When I mentioned this to Prof. Zeilinger he said, “That will happen someday. There is no doubt in my mind. It is just a question of technology.” Alessandro Fedrizzi had already shown me a prototype of a realism experiment he is hoping to send up in a satellite. It’s a heavy, metallic slab the size of a dinner plate. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/P3/
i.e. As the double slit, and quantum symmetries, clearly indicated decades ago,,, Consciousness indeed precedes collapse!
"It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries' “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” (Max Planck, as cited in de Purucker, Gottfried. 1940. The Esoteric Tradition. California: Theosophical University Press, ch. 13). “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.)
bornagain77
April 7, 2013
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Bornagain77, thanks for answering my question. I would like to have some understanding of the causal status of consciousness in quantum physics. My question about the equivalency between detectors and consciousness is indeed addressed:
Now it is often pointed out that measurement collapses the wave packet, but that the measuring device need not be a conscious observer.
So measurement - detectors - alone collapses the wave packet. No scientist in the room necessary. So why conflate a measuring device with a conscious observer? The answer to this question is:
Halvorson, if I understand him, replies to this that a non-conscious measuring device will itself be in an entangled state, (..)
Here I'm lost already. What is meant by 'non-concious measuring device'? Do they mean a measuring device acting on its own - without a supervising scientist? And what is meant with 'entangled'? Entangled with the 'splitting electron'? Entangled in what way?
(..) but that if a conscious subject observes it, only one of its possible states will be seen, so consciousness is crucial to making reality determinate.
What is being said here? Are they saying that when there is a 'conscious subject' in the room, checking the measurements, that at that point the wave packet collapses? And when he turns his head, or starts daydreaming, the wave packet resurrects?Box
April 7, 2013
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Dembski, in "Conservation of Information Made Simple", makes the point that Darwinists presuppose searches and/or convenient landscapes they are not entitled to by referring to the old joke of many scientists on an island trying to figure out the best way to open a can of beans, where the economist "supposes" a non-existent can opener as the most efficient way to open the can. The punchline: "Suppose a can opener." Dembski then goes on to point out that evolutionary biologists (of the materialist persausasion) smuggle in "can openers" all the time in their descriptions of evolutionary processes. Here is Dr Liddle trying to explain an "out" from Dembski's crushing argument that referring to a "landscape" as a source of progressive information to purchase functional novelty is simply begging the question of where such a convenient landscape came from:
Let’s imagine that some future OOL researcher, let’s call her Tokstad, discovers a chemical reaction, involving molecules known to be around in early earth, and conditions also likely to be present in early earth, that results in a double chain polymer of some sort, that tends to split into two single chains under certain cyclical temperature conditions, whereupon those single chain atracts with monomers in the soup to become double chains again, but now with two identical double chain polymers where before there were one. ... It’s quite a big suppose, and possibly impossible, but not beyond the bounds of chemically plausible science fiction.
IMO, when you do exactly what your debate opponent explicitly says you will do in order to smuggle in a means to acquire functional information - "suppose a can opener" - and you even do it with exactly the same terminology and in the same format as he has illustrated cannot gain ground over the cost of acquiring such a can opener, you are utterly blind and immune to reason. Dembski: "You are not accounting for how you got the can opener in the first place." Dr. Liddle: "I'm supposing a can opener."William J Murray
April 7, 2013
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Box, I find the easiest way to establish that consciousness precedes quantum wave collapse is not to focus so much on 'what' is collapsing the (infinite dimensional) wave function, as that line of investigation establishing the primacy of consciousness can get very technical very quickly, (such as the 'delayed choice quantum eraser' experiment),,, Though the following article does a excellent job of trying to make that line of investigation easy to understand:
The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul Chapter 6 is Hans Halvorson's 'The Measure of All Things: Quantum Mechanics and the Soul' Hans Halvorsen is a philosopher of quantum physics at Princeton University Description: Quantum theory's strange conclusions are founded on data obtained by measuring effects in certain experimental situations. But if quantum theory is correct there are no determinate data of the required sort, for the states of the measuring instruments will be superposed and entangled and thus indeterminate. The dualist has a way out of this problem. Superposition is when a physical system is in two apparently inconsistent states at once -- for example, an electron is passing through both the left-hand slit and the right-hand one at the same time. Because of the nature of linear dynamics, this superposition is retained in a device further down the line of this process. If this continued with an observer, he would be aware of inconsistently believing that the electron was in two places at once. But this is not what happens. Observation 'collapses the wave packet' (not a phrase Halvorson generally deploys) and only one determinate state is observed. Now it is often pointed out that measurement collapses the wave packet, but that the measuring device need not be a conscious observer. Halvorson replies to this that a non-conscious measuring device will itself be in an entangled state, but that if a conscious subject observes it, only one of its possible states will be seen, so consciousness is crucial to making reality determinate. (151) http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24611-the-soul-hypothesis-investigations-into-the-existence-of-the-soul/
Rather than that line of investigation, Box, I find that it is much easier to establish the primacy of consciousness to (infinite dimensional) quantum wave collapse by noting the geometric centrality of each unique point of conscious observation in the universe,,, i.e. the argument for God from consciousness can be framed like this:
1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_Fi50ljF5w_XyJHfmSIZsOcPFhgoAZ3PRc_ktY8cFo/edit The Galileo Affair and 'life' revealed as the true "Center of the Universe" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BHAcvrc913SgnPcDohwkPnN4kMJ9EDX-JJSkjc4AXmA/edit
bornagain77
April 7, 2013
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Thus with no certainty to be had for atheists from the foundation of reality itself (as revealed by quantum mechanics), how can atheists be so certain that Neo-Darwinism (or some variation of atheistic evolution therein) is 'beyond the slightest doubt'? It simply does not follow to have such certainty in a some atheistic version of evolution. Moreover, if one tries to reason from the other angle of trying to see if what are perceived to be 'naturalistic' processes can produce the complexity in life that we see,,,
ExPASy - Biochemical Pathways - interactive schematic http://web.expasy.org/cgi-bin/pathways/show_thumbnails.pl
,,,we are immediately confronted with a chasm, between 'simple' naturalistic processes and the integrated processes we find in life. A chasm that, conceptually speaking, makes the Grand Canyon look like a insignificant crack in the sidewalk,,
To Model the Simplest Microbe in the World, You Need 128 Computers - July 2012 Excerpt: Mycoplasma genitalium has one of the smallest genomes of any free-living organism in the world, clocking in at a mere 525 genes. That's a fraction of the size of even another bacterium like E. coli, which has 4,288 genes.,,, The bioengineers, led by Stanford's Markus Covert, succeeded in modeling the bacterium, and published their work last week in the journal Cell. What's fascinating is how much horsepower they needed to partially simulate this simple organism. It took a cluster of 128 computers running for 9 to 10 hours to actually generate the data on the 25 categories of molecules that are involved in the cell's lifecycle processes.,,, ,,the depth and breadth of cellular complexity has turned out to be nearly unbelievable, and difficult to manage, even given Moore's Law. The M. genitalium model required 28 subsystems to be individually modeled and integrated, and many critics of the work have been complaining on Twitter that's only a fraction of what will eventually be required to consider the simulation realistic.,,, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/to-model-the-simplest-microbe-in-the-world-you-need-128-computers/260198/ Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information - David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors - Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8 "No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms' genomes programmed?" http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4682-2-29.pdf
Nor does this chasm show appreciable signs of narrowing if one goes down in scope from the 'simplest' cell to trying to explain how 'simple' protein molecules arise:
The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds - Douglas Axe - 2010 Excerpt Pg. 11: "Based on analysis of the genomes of 447 bacterial species, the projected number of different domain structures per species averages 991. Comparing this to the number of pathways by which metabolic processes are carried out, which is around 263 for E. coli, provides a rough figure of three or four new domain folds being needed, on average, for every new metabolic pathway. In order to accomplish this successfully, an evolutionary search would need to be capable of locating sequences that amount to anything from one in 10^159 to one in 10^308 possibilities, something the neo-Darwinian model falls short of by a very wide margin." http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.1
Moreover, even the experimental evidence from Darwinists themselves land in the same ballpark for the extreme rarity of proteins:
Now Evolution Must Have Evolved Different Functions Simultaneously in the Same Protein - Cornelius Hunter - Dec. 1, 2012 Excerpt: In one study evolutionists estimated the number of attempts that evolution could possibly have to construct a new protein. Their upper limit was 10^43. The lower limit was 10^21. These estimates are optimistic for several reasons, but in any case they fall short of the various estimates of how many attempts would be required to find a small protein. One study concluded that 10^63 attempts would be required for a relatively short protein. And a similar result (10^65 attempts required) was obtained by comparing protein sequences. Another study found that 10^64 to 10^77 attempts are required. And another study concluded that 10^70 attempts would be required. In that case the protein was only a part of a larger protein which otherwise was intact, thus making the search easier. These estimates are roughly in the same ballpark, and compared to the first study giving the number of attempts possible, you have a deficit ranging from 20 to 56 orders of magnitude. Of course it gets much worse for longer proteins. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/12/now-evolution-must-have-evolved.html?showComment=1354423575480#c6691708341503051454
Moreover, as if the preceding was not bad enough to those who would wish to stick their head in the sand and pretend atheism is true, quantum mechanics, which atheists thought they had left neatly behind at the double slit experiment (read 'ignored' at the double slit), comes back full force at the base of life. i.e. It is now found that quantum entanglement, though at first thought to be impossible in the 'hot and noisy' environment of the cell, is now found to be 'holding life together':
Life Uses Quantum Mechanics - September 25, 2012 Excerpt: it looks as if nature has worked out how to preserve (quantum) entanglement at body temperature over time scales that physicists can only dream about. http://crev.info/2012/09/life-uses-quantum-mechanics/ Testing quantum entanglement in protein Excerpt: The authors remark that this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems.,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.,,, In summary, the authors say that they have demonstrated that entanglement can recur even in a hot noisy environment. In biological systems this can be related to changes in the conformation of macromolecules. Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
The reason this is so bad for atheists is that the 'non-local' correlations, as quantum entanglements are referred to, refuse to be explained by any conceivable materialistic scenario:
Looking Beyond Space and Time to Cope With Quantum Theory – (Oct. 28, 2012) Excerpt: To derive their inequality, which sets up a measurement of entanglement between four particles, the researchers considered what behaviours are possible for four particles that are connected by influences that stay hidden and that travel at some arbitrary finite speed. Mathematically (and mind-bogglingly), these constraints define an 80-dimensional object. The testable hidden influence inequality is the boundary of the shadow this 80-dimensional shape casts in 44 dimensions. The researchers showed that quantum predictions can lie outside this boundary, which means they are going against one of the assumptions. Outside the boundary, either the influences can’t stay hidden, or they must have infinite speed.,,, The remaining option is to accept that (quantum) influences must be infinitely fast,,, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm
Thus atheist are, (or at least should be), severely perplexed as to explaining this 'non-local' beyond space and time' cause that is holding life together ,,, but as a theist I am very comforted to know that Christianity has proposed such a 'beyond space and time' cause all along many centuries before the 'quantum effect' was even known about in life: Verse and Music:
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. ROYAL TAILOR – HOLD ME TOGETHER – music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbpJ2FeeJgw
bornagain77
April 7, 2013
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Hello Bornagain77, I have a question about the double slit experiment. Why do we speak of detectors as being an equivalent of an 'observer' or 'consciousness'? Let me formulate my question more generally: how undisputed is it that consciousness is a causal factor in these experiments?Box
April 7, 2013
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to revisit Mr. Arrington's opening observation:
,,,I just finished pursuing the articles that have been posted at TSZ during the last six months. Among the regular posters there I found not a single article that even mildly criticized (far less expressed skepticism toward) a single dogma one would expect to be held by the denizens of the faculty lounge at a typical university. Atheism. It’s true Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Fact beyond the slightest doubt Philosophical materialism. Check It seems that the regular posters at TSZ are skeptical of everything but the received wisdom, accepted conventions and cherished dogmas of the academic left.
I would certainly like to see the evidence for their belief that atheism is true. For instance when one approaches the foundation of reality revealed by quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanical foundation of reality reveals a foundation for reality that blatantly defies our concepts of time, space and even defies all of materialism itself.
Quantum Mechanics - Double Slit Experiment. Is anything real? (Prof. Anton Zeilinger) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayvbKafw2g0
Thus it can't be the empirical evidence about the foundation of reality that leads TSZ's crew to such certainty that their belief in atheism is true.,, In fact, when confronted with this type of consistent evidence from quantum mechanics, I've seen a few hard core atheists retreat to the dictum 'nobody really understands quantum mechanics', thus revealing their lack of certainty as to explaining the foundation of reality to a atheistic viewpoint. Moreover, even though the intricacies of Quantum Mechanics can be quite technical, there is a very simple point that everybody understands about Quantum Mechanics. Even people who see the double slit experiment for the very first time immediately 'understand' that it completely undermines a simplistic materialistic/atheistic point of view for the foundation of reality.,,,bornagain77
April 7, 2013
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PS: EA, could I have permission to put up the primer here at UD, credit to you?kairosfocus
April 7, 2013
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EA: Your note above on false positives is excellent. I have noted on how sampling 1 in 10^50 is feasible (as the Wiki article section on random document generation demonstrates), but that this is a factor of 1 in 10^100 short of the solar system level threshold. (And, I suppose I should note explicitly, that this shows a point of difference with WmAD on my part, I think the need for odds of 1 in 10^150, and conservativism, leads to a need to make the 10^150 possible states of the observed Cosmos' atoms, to be 1 in 10^150, hence my shift to 1,000 bits. That squaring of the Dembski threshold means that our observed cosmos, acting as a search engine for its thermodynamically credible lifespan, perhaps 50 mn times the usual suggested timeline to date, would not be able to sample as much as 1 in 10^150 of possible configs. This guarantees that, per sampling theory, it is utterly unlikely for a blind at random or chance dominated sample to pick up anything but the bulk of possibilities, once sampling is blind. Where the chemistry in question is patently highly contingent. And if one is arguing that the laws of physics and chemistry somehow have cell based life written into them, that would imply that they are programmed to create life, just as it is already quite evident that the cosmos is set up on fine tuning, in a way that facilitates forming the atoms that are the major part of cell based life. Let us not forget, the first six most abundant elements: H, He, C & O, Ne, N. That gets us to your basic protein in aqueous medium!) In this context, I must say, I like your summary from your linked page:
as intelligent design’s primary spokesperson, William Dembski, has pointed out, intelligent design’s use as a tool for change is secondary to intelligent design’s undertaking as an independent scientific enterprise. Finally, therefore, intelligent design refers to the science of detecting design. In this latter sense, intelligent design is not limited to debates over evolutionary theory or discussions of design in nature, but covers the study of signs of intelligence wherever they may occur: whether in archeology, forensic science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or otherwise. (Though not strictly limited to historical events, intelligent design argues that design can be detected in some things even in the absence of any reliable historical record or independent knowledge of a designing intelligence. It is in this context that we wish to discuss intelligent design.) Defined more tightly, intelligent design can thus be viewed as the science of studying the criteria, parameters and procedures for reliably detecting the activity of an intelligent agent. Associated with this latter more limited definition are scientists involved in such a scientific enterprise. These individuals include, probably most notably, Dembski and Michael Behe, and a number of other scientists who have begun to take notice of intelligent design as a legitimate scientific inquiry.
Let us see if we can have a more positive outcome, though I will say to you that I distinctly recall trying to help EL to see the issue of allowing false negatives cheerfully, in order to secure extremely high confidence on a positive ruling in light of sampling theory [which is far more broad than the requisites of making specific probability calculations]. At that time, she was simply not responding to that. KFkairosfocus
April 7, 2013
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F/N, attn TSZ: On design detection vs manufacturing methods, the case of the crystal skulls per Nat Geog (speaking inadvertently against known ideological interest):
The famed crystal skulls of ancient Mesoamerica have been a source of mystery and controversy for decades. The handful of known skulls have defied even the most advanced scientific efforts to determine who made them, when, and most puzzling, how. This specimen [--> this is a picture caption, top of page], owned by the British Museum in London, was originally thought to have been made by the Aztec of Mexico but was later determined to be a fake.
In short, design detection "that twerdun," is distinct from "whudunit," or "howtwerdun," or "whytweredun." These skulls are complex, functionally specific, organised in accordance with definite "wiring diagrams" for the implied wireframe meshes, and evidently works of art. Some are certainly fakes, e.g. the style of the captioned case strikes me as fairly modern European rather than Mesoamerican, pre-Columbian. In short, the objections do not pass even cursory tests for serious claims. They are rhetorical stunts, not serious or sober-minded thinking. The underlying disrespect for duties of care to truth, accuracy, fairness and more, strike me more and more. KFkairosfocus
April 7, 2013
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Mung @300: Yeah, I already addressed the alleged "rookie error" she attributed to Axe and Gauger in #206. Kind of turned around to bite her in that instance.Eric Anderson
April 6, 2013
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